The Death Of The Novel Inscription

While the much-trumpeted death of the novel doesn`t seem to be happening any time soon, I do have a very real fear that we readers stand on the brink of another literary death. For, now that we are well and truly ensconced in this age of Kindle, my worry is that the fine art of inscribing a book with a pertinent message for its recipient is starting to look decidedly peaky.

As a collector of secondhand books I am fascinated by the glimpses these inscri ptions give into relationships between friends, family, colleagues and lovers. So I compiled a book of the most intriguing. I have noticed that, in general, the older the book the more eloquent the message. Take this quite astonishing inscri ption found inside a secondhand copy of Penguin Selected Modern Short Stories, and dated - not insignificantly, I imagine - 26 September 1938, a few days before the signing of the Munich Agreement:

"When the written word appears before us in its simplicity - then we see that in the joy of expression we may have lost the honesty of thought which alone makes writing worth while. There is no right or wrong way - the choice is between two terrible wrongs and the most gifted and well informed people will hesitate before coming down on either side ."

I won`t quote the inscri ption in full here - it covers two whole flyleaves - and though it is impossible to tell whether the anonymous inscriber had any direct involvement with the events of September 1938, what is without doubt is his or her deep feeling and need to articulate. Sadly, I find it hard to imagine anyone using a book for such purposes today. Not that I`m so blinkered to lay the blame solely at Kindle`s door. (The ubiquity of text messaging, email and Twitter means that writing anything by hand longer than a Post-it note is fast becoming a rarity.) Nor am I such a luddite that I won`t concede Kindle has its practical benefits. (Though I still maintain they`d be hard pressed to furnish any rooms). But it does seems a shame that where once people treated a blank flyleaf as if it were the page of a letter or a diary, this practice may well be going the way of faux-leather bookmarks, pressed flowers and juvenile marginalia.