the illustrated man/the repulsive woman

The Guardian looks at literary tattoos.

What we seek to do when we cut literature into our flesh is to make something metaphysical physical. We take tattooed literature into ourselves in the most superficial of ways, inscribing rather than imbibing its significance. Put another way, lit tats really are only skin deep, vainglorious and shallow all at once.


I once had a plan to get this image from Djuna Barnes's The Book of Repulsive Women somewhere on my back.