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There’s no objective reason that this is wrong, but still, take that shit far far away from me
Doesn’t it fuck up the binding? Sure, a softback is still going to stay together in the immediate term, but the covers are almost always a single stronger piece, whereas the pages will now be free to work loose from the cut side.
So… I’d say it is objectively worse.
Correct.
It doesn’t need to stay together for a lifetime, the person only cares about it staying together for a few days till they’re done reading the section, after which it gets disposed of. This makes it much easier for them to actually read it, which means it’s objectively way better.
You…buy a book and then throw it away after you read it? Anyone does that?
In the movie My Blue Heaven, Steve Martin had a trunk full of the same (stolen) book and his excuse was “in case I want to read it more than once.”
I’ve heard there are PACs or whatever that buy thousands of copies of politicians books so they become best sellers. Does anyone know where the physical copies actually end up?
I don’t, but plenty of people do, and it’s entirely fine if that’s how they want to read
Well no it’s not entirely fine, it’s actually incredibly wasteful. Get a fucking library card if you don’t want to own, gift, or resell the books you read. That’s the Generic You of course.
I buy books to throw at anyone who can read. You literate fucks.
Actively making things worse because you have a shitty consumerist disposable product fetish actively makes the world worse.
Infinite Jest has extensive footnotes, which are at the back of the book. Some of them are 12 pages long and contain multiple subplots and plot points and gives history and context to how and why the Infinite Jest of the book is so deadly.
Holy shit I totally forgot about that. I’ve been meaning to reread for years now but haven’t felt ready lol. I loved it but got to the end and was like, wait, what? I thought this was going to wrap back around to the beginning. Am I too dumb for this book?
There was so many parts of that book that pop into my head randomly. I can hardly brush my teeth without thinking of Pemulis(sp?) passing out, and directly proper use of, floss after dinner at the Incandenzas (sp?). Tennis always had me thinking about it. Punts in football too. Selfie filters (the masks everyone starting having in their house for video calls.
E: oh, and nevermind infinite scroll and the basis of the plot
I think a lot about the guy who is scared aliens are trying to steal your thoughts with magnets and so they give him an MRI
The whole missile warfare game the tennis kids play was wild.
And for some reason, Hal laying on the floor imagining the amount of food he eats in a year filling the room and just being nauseous about it (I think he was also dealing with quitting the Bob Hope), really got into my head.
Man, I came across DFW when I was sitting in a very boring seminar at University of Illinois with my first smartphone in hand, enjoying the new ability to find something else to learn about while stuck there. No idea how exactly I came across it, but I read how cruise ship article and loved it. Started reading about him and was like, oh, this guy group up right here. And his parents are still here. It really caught my attention (again, boring seminar) and I was excited to read his stuff. I must have read some interviews of him or something.
Hit me hard when I learned of his suicide. Such a chilling feeling when a good communicator, like one that is able to capture parts of your inner monologue so well, through writing, speaking, of music, takes their own life.
I am completely fine with cutting Infinite Jest in half, or in thirds, or just throw the fucking thing in a wood chipper.
That psychopath needs reporting to the police.
That’s just wrong. If you’re worried about portability get an e-reader, don’t butcher up works of art.
I think most e-readers will stop working if you cut them in half to be more portable. Books still have the upper hand on this
Plus you can start a fire with them when you’re done, try to start a fire with an e-reader you gonna get one hell of a surprise
Pretty sure all ereaders work with lithium ion batteries these days. They’re quite flammable.
Even better, try making fire with a wet book. My ereadwr catches on fire when it gets wet though! Suck it dead trees
I’m trying to burn so many books but it’s too fucking damp right now!
Fahrenheit 420-69 360 noscope
They also can start a fire, but only once. While every chapter of a book can light a fire.
Another victory for booksAnd as Conan in the Discworld said so eloquently, if the paper is soft it’s the best toilet paper.
Sit down by the fire grandad and have some shoup
Chank you
Such an intellectual.
I mean, if you had like a hand bound copy or rare out of print book or something like that this sentiment makes sense, but if it’s just some abundant mass produced edition, I’m not so sure. Surely the artistry there is in the words, which aren’t damaged and exist in other copies anyway, rather than the cheap machine made physical medium.
It would absolutely ruin their durability, so I’d say it’s definitely objectively a bad idea.
To me it’s just disrespectful to damage a book, regardless of which physical form it has. Paperbacks falling apart when they’re worn out are OK, that’s basically showing how much they were loved. But taking scissors to them is still almost as bad as taking scissors to a first edition hardback.
No works of art were hurt for this. Mass printed paperback spines being damaged doesn’t hurt the words inside or the hundreds of thousands of other copies. Everyone should feel free to write on, highlight, and cut apart mass printed books, because the actual object itself was never the point.
Yeah, rare, old, and otherwise inaccessible books should be protected from random destruction, but there’s a huge difference between destroying a copy of infinite jest and a copy of something that’s at risk of not being accessible to someone by that copy being destroyed. And destroying either for art is wildly different from destroying them to keep someone from accessing it.
I collect books in a category that are stigmatized and rare, specifically related to queer and kink topics. These are topics that have been mass burned before. But even better than getting into fetishizing the object made of paper is to help get books at risk of inaccessibility to be archived and spread.
Also new, unsold books are frequently and in large amounts returned to the printer and recycled.
I mean, I think we print enough books that there’s no great loss if a couple get cut in half.
Works of art? I mean, the words in the book, of course, but surely not the medium itself, these look like those budget $15 editions that are mass printed on toilet paper…
this is so wrong.
you’re supposed to cut them in half so you can fit each side in the pockets of your cargo shorts.
That’s why I cut mine in half through the middle of the cover; top and bottom halves. Sure, makes it a little harder to read, but worth it when I can fit each half in my pockets perfectly.
if you cut them long ways, you can hide them up your sleeve like a hotdog
‘The Idiot’ was originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes. After a single, poorly received, screening of the full-length version, the film was severely cut at the request of the studio. This was against Kurosawa’s wishes. When the re-edited version was also deemed too long by the studio, Kurosawa suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead.
According to Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, there are no existing prints of the original 265-minute version.
Fuck that. Damn I would have watched that. Was it based on Dostoevsky or something else entirely? Imagine a master putting that much effort into a work of art, and then have it cut and chipped away at until there’s nothing left…
Based on Dostoyevsky’s novel, yes, and apparently the film was close to it. I’ve watched the existing version — it’s tolerable, although the physical quality of the film makes it a somewhat challenging experience. The gist of the story is pretty clear. To my shame, I haven’t read the novel, so idk what is lost compared to it.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
You should cut them into four pieces like me so you can rearrange them to get multiple different stories for the price of one book!
I think someone did that to my copy of Ulysses.
Clearly this is someone who actually reads their books. Given that they are mass market paperbacks… I have no problem with this. If I were an author I would much rather someone does this to my work and actually reads it and enjoys it to someone keeping a pristine copy unopened on their shelf forever.
infinite jest is half footnotes, which are at the back of the book, which is part of the “joke” of the book, being based around extreme academia.
Yeah, sure. The inane pretentiousness was just a “joke”!
Fuck that book.
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Are we there yet?
We’ve been here for a while buddy.
Well, only halfway there at first
In all honesty, in no way sarcastically, I consider this a war crime.
Skip jail. Straight to a firing squad of librarians.
Easy to spot, they’re the only firing squad with silencers
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Nice
“yeah, I just finished Infinite. It was pretty good, abrupt ending though. I hear Jest picks up right where it left off.”
You should cut diagonally. If it makes a sandwich better, imagine what it can do for a novel.
I have never been so offended by something so harmless in the greater scheme of things.
last year I’ve allowed myself to do marginalia, to allow me to write notes and whatever I want on the books I read while I read. it’s inherently destructive, but it changes the whole experience. reading is no longer a passive activity but a conversation with the material. and I love it.
but felt guilty about doing irreversible changes to the book. then this shit shows up.
It’s destructive but it’s also constructive. That conversation with the material gives future owners new perspectives. At least in my opinion as someone who collects old subcultural texts. Notes in the margins adds to the experience of an old book
it’s transformative, if I’m expected to change when reading a book so is the book
I love margin notes. My friends and I have a book exchange where we read a book, write in the margins, and pass it on to the next friend. It’s nice.
Since I turned 30 I write in the margins of books I read. The better the book is the more notes. Its much more engaging.
100%
maybe it’s my ADHD, but now I cannot read without a pen
Ok, but what is there to take notes about? Assuming it’s a novel, and not some reference book.
If you have really complex books with lots of story threads, I can imagine doing this. For example in Tolstoy’s War and Peace or GRRM A song of ice and fire books.
It would be more useful to take notes besides the book rather than inside it in that case. Maybe it’s just me, though.
I like the idea of this. It would make a re-read or even just flipping through the book years later a lot of fun.
and if another person reads it, they are engaging in that conversation as well and will know what you thought of the book and add to it.
Almost all of my books are thrifted, which gives me the luxury of no guilt. And I get to argue with previous marginalia, which is fun because they can’t respond.
This is kinda how books worked throughout most of medieval history. Paper was expensive and anyway, the margins often become teaching tools in and of themselves. It becomes a centuries long comment section, so ideas get passed down and develop through the centuries. Like one of the most important books of medieval philosophy that probably no one without a doctoral in theology gives a shit about is Peter Lombard’s Sentences which is just a collection of common comments people in about books that he thought were good for teaching. (I have been working on implementing a HTML cross reference version of it using Twine, and have been trying to parse [pun intended] a theological discussion about what it means to enjoy not use god. Larger project is to recreate an accessible “medieval curriculum” through Twine)
As much as I’d fantasize about all my books preserved as a library, they’ll probably be separated from each other someday. The least I can do is put my soul in them - tuck a pamphlet or bookmark, a movie ticket. I’ve never been unhappy seeing a comment in a book - I was reading a 60 year old middle school text recently, and discovered a kid had wrote “[clearly female name] is a MAGGOT F_GGOT!!!” which was just so fucking hilarious.
Did you know that the Talmud is basically marginalia? it looks so weird because marginalia was turn into text then got another generation of marginalia
As someone who would never, ever do this to one of my beloved collection: Go for it. Watever keeps you enjoying them. As others have said, we’re not talking hundred year old first edition hardcovers here. You can still tape them up and pass them on, unlike those philistines who take one on a hike and rip out the pages they’ve read to use for campfire tinder.
