Book Review: Letter to a Future Lover by Ander Monson

Letter to a Future Lover—Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries
Essays by Ander Monson
Graywolf Press, February 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1555977061
$22.00; 176 pp.
Reviewed by Susan Thurston

Those charmed by the marginal notations in library books or forgotten notes tucked within the leather-bound treasure found at the sidewalk book vender will value Letter to a Future Lover–Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries.

Ander Monson relishes and craves the connection between a book’s previous reader, himself, and readers of the future. He uses the odd marginal notations, stories about a library vandal he names the Defacer, and even remnants from card catalogues as the clues and strands of ideas around which he has created short essays urging the reader toward a richer and more engaging connection with books.

Originally, these essays were published on cards within an artful box; the reader was encouraged to browse and engage with them at random, not unlike a user of a card catalog during the vintage age of libraries, where the long drawers of typed cards encouraged browsing as much as determined discovery. And browsing is the best way to approach this cover-bound version. Do not begin with the first and make your way through to the end. Take the sampler approach in reading these illustration-spiced short essays. Open at a random point and dive in.

“Write in this book” is his command in the How to Read a Book chapter (87). Take the challenge. Then, since you will likely want to share this book, the next reader will encounter your mark. Monson wants that kind of connection because, “(t)o read another writer’s marked-up copy of a book is to read two books at once, text and paratext, the passage and the pilgrim’s progress, to see how an animal takes root and begins to worm inside a brain, even if we don’t get to see its final bloom.” (19)

Monson’s prose is elegant, lyrical, and haunting. His breath is always at the reader’s ear, in a comforting way. He indeed wants to seduce the reader into always approaching books and reading as personal and intimate, to bring reading full circle, to know that time with books, as with a lover, can never be enough. We will always want more.

Susan Thurston writes poetry and prose, with award-winning work published in numerous periodicals and anthologies including The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (American Public Media), Low Down and Coming On (Red Dragonfly Press, 2010), and Open to Interpretation: Water’s Edge (Taylor & O’Neill, 2012). In her novel Sister of Grendel (The Black Hat Press, 2016) she weaves a reconstruction of the Beowulf myth. In addition to LAR, her reviews have also appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She writes about books, writing, and more books at www.susanthurstonwrites.com.