I came across a fascinating article on the Publisher’s Weekly blog PWxya about books that inspire tattoos. I love the concept of having a tattoo drawn from a favorite book, and before now had no idea this was such a popular genre.

As someone who has been yearning for a tattoo of my own, I’ve spent a lot of time considering the art form and the importance of meaning and symbology when choosing a design, especially given a tattoo’s permanence (laser surgery notwithstanding). Gabe Habash, the story’s author, says:

What’s just as interesting as a tattoo is the story behind the tattoo, and that’s certainly true for the subcategory of tattoos that are inspired by famous literary works.

Habash, with some help, spent many hours combing the Internet’s two most extensive literary tattoo sites – Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos and The Word Made Flesh – then cross-referenced the tattoos they found most frequently with Google image searches, “all to get to the bottom of what books inspire the most tattoos and why.” They narrowed their list down to five books that inspire the most tattoos: Fight Clubby Chuck Palahniuk, The Little Princeby Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Where the Wild Things Areby Maurice Sendak, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby Lewis Carroll, and Slaughterhouse-Fiveby Kurt Vonnegut.

Children’s books account for three of the five books, largely because of their enduring messages and the sense of childhood nostalgia they evoke. In the case of Alice in Wonderland, which, according to Habash, has inspired the greatest volume and the most variety of tattoos of all the books, people are mostly attracted the rich imagery the book provides. Tattoos inspired by Where the Wild Things Are seem to be pretty evenly split between images of Wild Things and Max. But the “single most popular book-inspired tattoo is, by far, ‘So it goes,’ the mantra from Vonnegut’s most famous book.”

Which leads us to the why behind these literary tattoos. Certain quotes and images that celebrate counterculture messages and promote the individual are popular, as is to be expected since these are typical themes among tattoo fans in general. Tattoos with specific connections to these books also evoke themes of loneliness, being true to yourself, and the appreciation of the world’s wonder and beauty.

Other oft-inked Vonnegut quotes are: “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt,” “To die would be an awfully big adventure,” and “I carry your heart.” Fight Club also inspires a fair number of text tattoos (doubtless with a little thanks to Brad Pitt), with “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything,” used most often. The Little Prince‘s most famous line, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye,” is also extremely popular.

With nothing like the semi-scientific method that Habash and his team employed to come up with their list of the most prevalent tattoos from the most popular books, I took a look at Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos and The Word Made Flesh to check out the literary tattoo phenomenon for myself.

For one thing, appropriately enough, The Word Made Fleshis actually a book!

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is a guide to the emerging subculture of literary tattoos — a collection of 100 full-color photographs of human skin indelibly adorned with quotations and images from Pynchon to Dickinson to Shakespeare to Plath. Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work — The Word Made Flesh is part photo collection, part literary anthology written on skin.

Okay, so that’s going on my Amazon wish list immediately.

One of the things I loved about The Word Made Flesh was how many poetic tattoos were featured. I definitely could see a line from one of my favorite poems by e.e. cummings or Wallace Stevens finding its way into ink.

Of course, this tattoo interested me. Readers of the site are encouraged to post photos of their own literary tattoos, and the woman who submitted this said:

As writers, what are we if we aren’t evoking emotions from our readers? The semicolon is a tribute to all of my fellow writers who know how to use it correctly.

Where The World Made Flesh is a site that lends itself to browsing, Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos is better catalogued, with links to top-rated tattoos and categories and tags that make it easy to search for certain subjects or authors. It’s true that the books and specific tattoos that Gabe Habash mentioned in his article feature prominently, but I had fun clicking through the likes of Lemony Snicket and T.S. Eliot to satisfy my amused curiosity. I didn’t discover anything earth shattering or aesthetically outstanding, but it was interesting to note that “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seemed to inspire lots of people and that tattoos made to look like old-fashioned typewriter text are cool, perhaps due to their straightforward simplicity and direct correlation to their literary source.

Some of my favorite tattoos from this site were, quelle surprise, based on poetry. I also loved this arm tattoo of a line from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, one of my favorite authors of all time, and this quote from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

Habash’s conclusions about why people choose certain literary references for their tattoos seems to be spot on, based on what I saw. Children’s books and their nostalgic subjects are popular, as are poems and other iconic phrases. Ultimately, why does anyone choose to have something inked on their flesh except that it speaks to them in some significant way. (Or they got really drunk and ended up with a Harry Potter tramp stamp.)

The tattoo I’ve been planning for the longest time is a crow, done by Zulu in LA, but my corvid won’t be quoting “Nevermore.” Poe is just a bit dark for me.