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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy September
10, 2003: Weighed
Down by the Past Bound Volume. For me those words resonate with weight and mystery and importance. They're always intoned in a librarian's voice, perhaps Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set or my mother or any of the number of other librarians who had a hand in raising me. "That would be in the Bound Volumes," I can hear the voice say. Bound Volumes are magical because they take something lightweight, say a magazine, and wrap enough of them together in the trappings of prestige — leather! — that throwaway bathroom reading becomes a reference work worthy of a financier's library. Suddenly an article on snowboarding or eating pizza in the dorms is quantified and meaningful: Volume LVXXI, No. 8., p. 43. Bound Volumes mean so much to me because my entire professional life is contained in them. I have two sets that hold much of my written work at Princeton. Of course there are the PAW volumes from 2000-02. They're just the right size to fit on a tall bookshelf, the gold stamping on black (THE PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY, VOL. C) endowing their neighbors on the shelf with impressive significance. The other is the collection that set me on the path to Bound Volume-hood in the first place. This collection does nothing for the prestige of my library, because the books are too damn big for any shelf. Yes, as any former Prince editor recognizes immediately, I'm talking about the bound volumes of the Prince. Measuring 11 by 17 by some 2 or 3 inches high and weighing five pounds apiece, they're a burden that stays with you all your life. You can't throw them away — they're Bound Volumes, for heaven's sake — so you hide them in your parents' basement until the folks retire and tackle that empty-nester housecleaning every aging editor dreads. You can only hope that by that time you have a basement of your own big enough to carry the weight of the Prince Bound Volumes. In all the years the Prince volumes have dragged behind me like a convict's ball and chain, I've looked inside them maybe once. Who wants to read the words of a 20-year-old aspiring writer on a meaningless golf or swimming match? (Yes, I was a sports editor.) The thought of revisiting my own juvenilia made me queasy when I bothered to think of it. But this fall it struck me, a case of Reunion-itis. Yes, 15 years ago this fall I was starting my senior year at Princeton. I dragged out 1988, Volume II from its resting place, blew the dust off "Jane L. Chapman" on the front cover, and opened the massive book with trepidation. I found first a letter from my mother. She was sending some clippings (positive press about me) but Dad, bless him, wanted them back. And how were those new shoes working out? Smiling, I found the heart to read some of my own words. Cliché-ridden, true — always one of my faults — but here and there sprinkled with some original and entertaining bits. A golf coach described a loss as "a spastic attack." A volleyball story, though riddled with phrases like "prowess," "force to be reckoned with," and "the roof caved in," at least showed enough insight to prove I'd been there and been paying attention. And as a final reward, I came across a profile of Mitch Daniels '71, complete with a hilarious picture, it must be said, from his Nassau Herald. Then he was being singled out as an adviser to presidential hopeful Dan Quayle; some 12 years later he'd earn a place in my other set of volumes when PAW featured him, sans the wide stars-and-stripes tie of the yearbook photo, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Which proves you can't escape history. Especially when it follows
you in five-pound Bound Volumes.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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