Memo from the past

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Books are receptacles of human thought, and they are also, quite literally, receptacles — who has not found an old movie stub, photo or grocery list that had been acting as a bookmark?

Recently, a reader delivered to Book Review a tiny piece of its heritage, a note retrieved from a book and dated to 1978. The note was written by Robert Kirsch, one of Book Review’s earliest editors and critics, and also father of our regular contributor, author Jonathan Kirsch, and grandfather of poet and critic Adam Kirsch.

The note writer, a Mr. Katzin, apparently contacted Kirsch to find out more about the papers of James Boswell, edited in a series by Frederick A. Pottle. Such an exchange was much more common and routine in those pre-bibliofind days.

Brief but gracious, brief but engaged, Kirsch’s reply serves as an example of a hospitality that seems harder to muster today. What, to respond to a reader’s question? In a handwritten note? With a friendly tone? You expect too much! ‘Indeed, Pottle did!’ Kirsch writes at one point. ‘There are now eight or nine volumes.’ He then directs the reader to possible sources for the existing volumes. The note had been found inside a book donated to a local library: Thanks to Connie Unger for finding it and for realizing we might like it for our archives.

Of course I put the note in the mail to his son. But before I did, I held it in my hands and felt the distance between his time and ours.

Nick Owchar