The tiger is in the library
A mixed mailbag
There is nothing to connect the following excerpts, apart from the fact that I’ve bookmarked them all during the past few weeks. I send them out in the hope that at least one of them speaks to you.
Let me talk to you of rats, or rather of a rat with whom I have become acquainted. I was sitting in the porch of the Pwlldu Inn on a cold, sunny afternoon, eating an unnaturally large sandwich and sipping at a quart mug—both sandwich and mug were almost as large as me. In the midst of my meal I heard a loud stamping (that is the only honest word to describe it), and, looking up, saw a rat standing immediately in front of me, his eyes fixed on mine. A rat? This was a rat with a capital R, a vast iron-gray animal as big as a big cat, with long, drooping white whiskers and a tail like an old frayed whip. Normally I am frightened to death by rats, even by mice, and certainly by moths, but this monstrosity of a creature did not alarm me at all. He couldn’t move quickly anyway, he was much too fat. He merely stood there in front of me until I threw him a piece of cheese. He sniffed it, swallowed it, and stamped away. Again ‘stamped’ is the only word: he went away like a fat old soldier from a canteen. Thinking of him when he had gone, I came to the conclusion that he must be the Father of all Rats, the First Rat, the Rat Progenitive, the Rat Divine.
Dylan Thomas
Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson
December 1934
(From The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas)
I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? — like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed?
Virginia Woolf
Letter to Vita Sackville-West
18th August 1929
(From The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4)
I met [name redacted] recently—a stooped, coyote-eyed man with small hands, fingers like little sausages and soft as those of an old, old lady. He caresses his fingers in his lap as though they were precious and in danger. To shake hands with him is like touching the teats of an old cow.
John Steinbeck
Letter to Ed Sheehan
8th January 1963
(From Steinbeck: A Life in Letters)
Soon, we are told, we will call up on “bookscreens” any “text” on demand, and will be able to change its appearance, ask questions of it, “interact” with it. When books become “texts” that we “interact” with according to criteria of utility, the written word will have become simply another aspect of our advertising-driven televisual reality. This is the glorious future being created, and promised to us, as something more “democratic”. Of course, it means nothing less than the death of inwardness—and of the book. This time around, there will be no need for a great conflagration. The barbarians don’t have to burn the books. The tiger is in the library.
Susan Sontag
Letter to Jorge Luis Borges
13th June 1996
(From Where the Stress Falls)
I say it with a true heart, the worst injury one can do to the person who loves one is to cover oneself from head to foot in a shining impermeable condom of irreproachable behaviour.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Letter to a friend
21st July 1946
(From Sylvia Townsend Warner: Letters)
The air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy.
John Keats
Letter to Fanny Brawne
May 1820
(From The Letters of John Keats)
Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat. The redeeming things are not “happiness and pleasure” but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Letter to his daughter, Scottie
5th October 1940
(From A Life in Letters)
I miss your lips, your hands, your whole warm and strong body, and your face and your smiles, your voice. I miss you. But I like missing you so hard because it makes me feel strongly that you are not a dream, you are real, you are living, and I'll meet you again.
Simone de Beauvoir
Letter to Nelson Algren
23rd May 1947
(From A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren)
Our life is short, and soon we shall be on the other side, and even if we don’t ‘know’ anything about the Great Beyond, nevertheless we have experienced the fact that a dead person may often be dearer and closer to us and more alive than the living all around us, and herein lies the solid foundation of our heart’s natural connection with the other side.
Hermann Hesse
Letter to Grete Gundert
17th May 1947
(From Hymn to Old Age)
In the twentieth century men everywhere like to breathe; and the Negro citizen still cannot, you see, breathe. And, thus far, the intensity of our resentment has not yet permeated white society which remains, in spite of the headlines, convinced it is our problem.
Lorraine Hansberry
Letter to Kenneth Merryman
27th April 1962
(From To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: An Informal Autobiography of Lorraine Hansberry)
When I think of you standing right at the edge of everything, starting off for Spain, starting off for college, there is so much that I wish for you in life —so much of goodness and happiness and luck in the search for whatever is beautiful and fulfilling in this naughty world. My wishes fly upward and outward, and if wishing will do any good, you should have no fears for the future—all will be serene and fruitful and felicitous. And all will be deserved. The wishes of a man for his only granddaughter!
E. B. White
Letter to Martha White
31st May 1973
(From The Letters of E. B. White)
One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy.
William Carlos Williams
Letter to this mother
12th February 1904
(From The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams)
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William Carlos Williams knows where it's at.
I live a short walk from Pwlldu Bay where the eponymous Inn was situated. The building still exists though trading ceased years ago (it’s not easy to get to as it’s at the bottom of a steep cliff with no proper road access, but the bay is beautiful.)