I’ve neither fronted a band, nor run across an African desert. Any attempt to make myself appear that windswept and interesting would a) be in vain, and b) probably entail some obnoxious holiday snap from the Philippines or the Dolomites. But holidays on beaches and up mountains don’t really say much about me, other than what I’d rather be doing at any given moment.
I suppose I have a PhD (in English Literature), but it feels like even mentioning it basically amounts to a humblebrag. (See??!!) Nevertheless, pointing out the institutional verification of my planetary intellect would say something more abiding about me; namely, that I love books. In fact, I love them so much, I am entirely unable to resist defacing them with Stabilo Boss highlighters and sententious marginalia.
For this I make no apology. But for other book-inclined peeps, the discovery that I make wee notes on the page and highlight passages in Laser Lemon and French Lime is often enough to take out a blood vessel or two. Folk are genuinely horrified. But allow me to make my case.
Shakespeare did it (allegedly). Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace; all were prolific scribblers. Herman Melville’s copy of Paradise Lost was laden with commentary; there’s now whole lines of scholarship based on that alone.
And as if that lineup isn’t persuasive enough, personally I’m with Edgar Allen Poe who said that marking a book “is the highest respect you can pay [an author].” I respond to books, and when I do: down must go my Big Thinks, right there in the margin. The defense rests. Sue me.
But moreover, there’s a pleasing, almost intimate pleasure in encountering other readers’ notes. I’m holding the self-same book some stranger once held, somewhere, sometime, and I’m instantly in a kind of metaphysical conversation with them. Deep, right?
And sometimes it’s just really, really funny. Pictured is my all-time favourite exchange, involving three distinct marginalians*. And I can further confirm, having also suffered through this particular tome: it’s painfully true. Sorry, Mr. Ornstein.
*I made this word up, but I’m allowed. I have a PhD 😉