Broken Pages

Clear tape and scissors. That’s all you really need. And, sadly, the older ones usually fall apart first. Classics and first editions; I love reading old books. Their covers can be quite handsome too having preceded ´´Oprah Book Club´´ and ´´NYTimes Bestseller´´ stamps that seem more like promotional stains on good cover art. One time I spotted One Hundred Years of Solitude and quickly grabbed it from the stacks of science fiction, pop-literature and self-help titles that, for whatever reason, dominate the Peace Corps library. The book’s cover is a painting: a man and a woman embracing, seemingly naked, in a tangle of plants and vines against a glow of warm red sun. It’s beautiful. And I kept glancing at it while reading the book, imagining a far off country-town in the jungles of Latin America. Unfortunately, it was slowly breaking away from the book’s spine as I tried gently to read the aging book. As chance would have it, it finally freed itself while I myself was finishing the last chapter. A shame for sure but understandable given the years the book had. Cover in hand, I was reluctant to simply throw it away and I set out to mend the parted limb. I cut a clear piece of tape the length of the book and placed half on the cover, the other half on the spine, being careful so as not to trap air bubbles between tape and book. There, I thought, all better. It looked as I had found it minus the slightly visible line of the tape’s edge. And it was an easy job, worth it for me and hopefully the next reader of Márquez. But other books I’ve seen come in much worst shape. There’s not much to be done with a plague of mold and mildew that destroy ink and paper alike. But, for the most part, books read in the Peace Corps mainly accrue damage from heavy circulation, us volunteers having a somewhat limited selection. We scavenge the bookshelves of other volunteers and, in mostly fruitless attempts, try our luck in the consistently picked through Peace Corps library. Of course, one can obtain books new, but there are only so many bookstores in Panama and most have a lousy English section. And, more importantly, who has the money to buy new books? But it was in the Peace Corps library where I, quite luckily, happened upon Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck, a book I had wanted to read for quite some time now. It wasn’t a first edition print but republished in 2002. It was less than a decade old and yet appeared to be much older. I imagined it passing through many a volunteers’ hands and when I picked it up the pages fell from the loose binding, tape like frayed bandages not withstanding. It needed help and I took it home to care for it. Once on my desk, I began removing old strips of tape slowly as if peeling off band-aids. I then tenderly reapplied fresh, clean strips along the spine and loose pages. It reads the same but looks better and will hopefully last longer having extended its (book) shelf-life. I thought about why I had gone to the trouble of doing this and was reminded of all the old—and sometimes not so old—books reinforced with tape I had read in my life. Instead of considering them a loss a bit of effort was made and something important continues to be shared. And I like knowing a book has gotten extra attention when it has needed it the most, especially the beloved ones. Reading a taped-up book, a bedraggled version of its former self, one can see the stories will to survive in creased and wrinkled spines, torn and faded covers, tattered paper stained yellow, passed down like heirlooms from one volunteer to the next. Literature enduring, despite all the broken pages.