Write in my margins ... please!
Mortimer Adler, of Great Books
fame (or often, in our post-modern times, infamy), wrote a now-classic essay published
in 1941 in Saturday Review: How
to Mark a Book. Early in the text Adler makes his point:
I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is
not an act of mutilation but of love.
Adler describes a number of devices for marking books, ranging from simple underlining,
or "vertical lines at the margin" for emphasis of already underlined
passages, to out-and-out writing in the margins. As a student of John Dewey, these
markings are a means of interacting with what we
read:
But don't let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn't consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.
The people at Levenger Design Company (now apparently simply Levenger) tout their
wares as Tools for Serious Readers. Among other items, they advertise lighting,
book stands, pens and ink and much more. And when they suggest that you mark up
a book, they want you to do it in style. After posting an article on Writing
in Books that examined both "Preservationists" and "Footprint
leavers", they followed up with a column on How
to Leave Masterly Marginalia which included a page with tips for what might
be called designer markings. The idea is interesting, though one gets the impression
that the people who might use them are more interested in displaying their marginalia
on their coffee-tables than actually using them.
Numerous additional references to marginalia can be found on the web. Many of
these seem to exude a sense of joy in the practice. Not a "bad boy",
"let's see if we can get away with this" sort of joy, but instead a
sense of being involved in a practice that seems to make sense. One
columnist even proposes (undoubtedly with a wink in his eye) a "Society
for the Protection of Amateur Marginalia", a society devoted to putting all
that nice white space on the page to good use.
Go to: Is there marginalia for sale on e-bay?, or
Go to: In the margins of cyberspace.