A Love Affair Reaches A Pinnacle & Initiates A New One

Although it’s on TIME Magazine’s list of All-TIME Greatest Novels, John Barth’s 1960 picaresque novel The Sot-Weed Factor is not very well known. This is a shame.

I’ve had a love affair with this book for almost a year now. Because of it, last night, a coup de grace was delivered to my willpower – and my chequebook.

How do you keep your place?

I worked at a public library for a little while, back in the day. I worked there long enough to find some interesting items masquerading as bookmarks: a dried wasp corpse, a tissue that looked used, an opened condom packet (one of the lubey kinds), and a paper toy with an elastic-band mechanism which sent it flapping its wings at me when I opened the hardcover.

I’m inclined to believe most of those were deliberate boobie-traps.

(Then there’s the legends of Things Patrons Forgot: Bags, small children, their own names, and an artificial leg. True story.)

Keaggy.com has documented some interesting and unorthodx bookmarks of their own. It’s sure to tickle the bibliophile and the voyeur alike (or that hideous beast known as the bibliophilic voyeur), so in lieu of an informative update from yours truly, do take a look.