Book lovers, lock your doors. And if you see a bearded man with a British accent and a knife eyeing your library, do not let him in.
Alex Christofi, a novelist and editor at the London publisher Oneworld, horrified Twitter on Tuesday with a tweet in which he admitted to book maiming.
“Yesterday my colleague called me a 'book murderer' because I cut long books in half to make them more portable. Does anyone else do this? Is it just me?” he posted. Accompanying his tweet was a photograph of three mangled books: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex and Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time.
Responses to his tweet varied but many book lovers were clearly aghast at Christofi’s lifehack.
Copy editor and grammar daddy Benjamin Dreyer was uncharacteristically at a loss for words, responding, “What in the actual.”
EJ Dickson of Rolling Stone replied, “We live in a society.” And freelance journalist Harriet Marsden opined, “I dog-ear pages, underline bits, write notes, drop sauce on them and take them in the bath. But you, madam, need to get in the bin.”
Guardian columnist Rhiannon L. Cosslett had her fellow Briton’s back, though, writing, “I really like this Alex, and am completely ok with it. In fact it undercuts (tish boom) their hubris in writing such a bloody long book in the first place.”
Christofi seemed to be taking the criticism in stride. As of Tuesday morning, his Twitter biography had been changed to include the phrase “book murderer.”
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
