Years ago I borrowed this copy of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler from my father-in-law, and when I opened it up I found Calvino’s 1985 NYTimes obit and stories from a 1983 Harper’s.
I was so surprised and delighted by these unexpected artifacts that I decided to start saving clippings in my own books. Here’s my brand new copy of John Ashbery’s The Knew What They Wanted, in which I stuffed a NYTimes review and a photo of his collage desk.
Who knows whether I or anybody else will ever open the book again after reading it, but now it’s a treasure box. Its own little archive…