Note found in a recalled copy of Hypertext 3.0

[philthecow]

If you are reading this book:

Know that I have been carrying it with me everywhere I go, every day, for months. You have deprived me and my thesis of so much knowledge, and I will be absolutely disconsolate until another copy is in my hands or this one is returned to me. I can say the following with a hint of doubt or remorse:

You are a usurper; and I deserve this book more than you do.

4/2/2007

Comments

[justice-fishy.livejournal.com]

I only have one response, buy the book off Amazon and stop bitching...

Unless I'm missing the point entirely

[nosuchweather.livejournal.com]

at my school you can take out books for your thesis for the entire year.




it's really, really, really nice. and it sucks big-time to not have the books one needs for one's thesis. speaking of which i am going on amazon right now style.

[liseuse.livejournal.com]

Oh good grief. It's not like it's going to be in someone else's hands forever. Plus, you could just buy it. That's why Amazon exists after all!

Also, my department issued us all with letters to take to the library saying that we could have our core or major dissertation texts out until the deadline had passed so that this doesn't happen. I think people can still recall them, but when they're done with them, we get the right back. However, this is mostly because we all went with odd little dissertation topics which no one else is interested in. I doubt that anyone else wants the 1894 Bullen edition of Middleton's collected works, and if they do, I am willing to pay the fines so I don't have to return them for the next twenty days - which is when I have to hand the damn thing in anyway.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, the sheer drama of it is amusing. On the other hands, thesis-writing seniors tend to be somewhat less than sane, so you may want to get it back to the library as soon as you're done with it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Hilarious! I would reply on the other side of the paper that their sense of entitlement is disgusting and that if they like the book so much they should support the author(s) and buy their own copy.

I'm sympathetic to the high emotion felt by someone who urgently needs a text for their study, but I'm also often bowled over by how college library patrons seem to think the library is an extension of their own living room (did you see the note in the McCabe suggestion book that the library should stock iPod chargers?).

[zimzil.livejournal.com]

that's amazing.

[gerbilicious85.livejournal.com]

LOL
I love this person, whoever they are.

[stina-marina.livejournal.com]

now i feel inspired to leave insane-sounding notes in library books.

[stoneunturned.livejournal.com]

Hah! That's very charming.

[pimmers.livejournal.com]

LOL, that is some kind of excellent.

[(Anonymous)]

Lauren,

As an act of reparation for neglecting to send my 20th Century German Thought class a link to Derrida's "Structure, Sign and Play" in due time, I sent out an interesting interactive link to a consideration of the piece that made good use of Landow's principles of hypertextuality (whatever they may be). In a tumultuous spell of twelve-or-so minutes, I realized that the Landow/Hypertextuality of my email was the same as the one that graced a subject heading that I had seen very recently on The Olde LiveJournal, so I quickly contextualized the note above ("a friend of mine"..."at another 'university' "..."recalled...") and sent it out to the mostly-sleeping members of my poor, haphazard class.

My professor, if anything, seemed to approve, so I thought that I would show you the degree of beneficient snideness that this beautiful little piece of angst-poetry and your story at large was able to generate:

Quoting Silke Weineck, Professor of Germanic Literature:

"The lesson, I assume, is that carrying around a book on New Media for months erases all
memory of Old Media such as xerox copies?"

Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw.

Lauren Stokes--how are you? How is Swarthmore? Und Deutsch? Pray tell--what is it that you are studying? Tell me about Hypertextuality! Tell me about exciting, intellectualized things, because I feel that I have been living in a hole made of mud for most of a year!

Yours Robotically,
Jessi Holler,
Lost, Mostly.