Do You Write In The Margins?

There are people who are vehemently opposed to defacing books, inside and out. Many take great care not to crack the spines of mass market paperbacks or dent the dust jackets of hardcovers.

Me? I like to write margin notes. I highlight relevant lines. My paperbacks don't have uncreased spines. My dust jackets might end up with creases and minute tears. About the only thing I will not do is dog-ear the pages.

Looks like I am in ancient company. Even those monk scribes who laboriously worked for months on a single illuminated manuscript, tended to leave margin notes.

The following, unintentionally humorous, GEMS come from the spring 2012 issue of Lapham's Quarterly, entitled Means of Communication. Thanks to Brain Pickings for bringing them to my attention.

The parchment is hairy.

Oh, my hand.

Thank God, it will soon be dark.

Writing is exessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.

As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.

Now I have written the whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink.

My justification for marginalia comes from How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (1940).

"When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it—which comes to the same thing—is by writing in it."

"Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him."

Does that make you want to take a pen to your books?