Marginalia
Marginalia is of critical importance to biographers and historians studying controversial figures. We know far more about such disparate figures as John Adams and Joseph Stalin because they enthusiastically marked up their books and documents with sharp and brutally frank opinions, revealing the true feelings often masked to contemporaries. Stalin, who sometimes used a crayon, would mark certain passages with “ha ha!” which, far from being a sign of the dictator’s amusement indicated rage toward the author – sometimes with lethal consequences. Stalin’s rival and equally deadly disciple, Mao ZeDong scrawled erudite literary, scholarly, sometimes poetical, comments about philosophy and Chinese history that belied his taste for the maniacal ruin of a classical Confucian culture in which he was deeply versed.
Richard Nixon, who clinked toasts of maotais with Mao and Zhou ( mostly Zhou as Mao was seriously ill) during Nixon’s historic visit ran his semi-isolated presidency via marginalia he methodcally wrote on news clippings, memos and yellow legal pads all day long, which he sent to his “Lord High Executioner” H.R. Haldeman, who like Henry Kissinger, discreetly ignored Nixon’s angrier, stranger and more ill-considered notations while carrying out Nixon’s incisive or at least harmless instructions. Harry Truman, known for employing blistering profainity in private, was also capable of the searing marginal commentary favored by John Adams.
It isn’t just e-readers, iPads and PCs that have reduced marginalia. The culture of literacy is in a general decline in America and the “gotcha” nature of modern politics and the criminalization of policy differences have caused political figures to adopt a strategy of eschewing diaries, journals, letters and email on the advice of attorneys. Statesmen are following the old rule of Chicago alderman, “Don’t write it down when you can say it, don’t say it when you can nod, don’t nod when you can wink”. It’s a loss to history. We will know far more about Teddy Roosevelt’s true interior life or Richard Nixon’s than we will of Barack Obama’s. Very little that is recorded will not be, in part, artifice and marginalia is a poor strategy for artifice designed to craft an image or advance an argument.
As part of the diminishing cadre of marginalians, I like to mark up books with colored, ultra fine point, sharpies. Generally lighter hues so it won’t bleed heavily through the page. Occasionally, for especially important passages, maybe one or two a book, a highlighter is used so that in the future, I can lazily pull the book from the shelf and quickly flip to the paragraph in question. I tend to do a lot of underlining and bracketing; when I was younger, I “argued” more with the authors in the margins. Older now, I expand on their points whether I agree with them or not. The Kindle has the capacity to type in notes, but I have not used the function much because most of the books I have read on it are fiction.
What do you do with the margins of your books?
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Joseph Fouche:
March 6th, 2011 at 5:19 am
I keep them pristine. However, one of my most treasured books is a Great Books version of Machiavelli’s Prince from the 1950s covered with my late grandmother’s marginalia. Not everyone’s grandma reads The Prince and not everyone gets to read Grandma’s 5o year old marginalia on The Prince.
zen:
March 6th, 2011 at 5:35 am
Bravo! First rate anecdote! And….probably best not to mess with your grandmother.
Scott:
March 6th, 2011 at 6:32 am
I will put some notes in the margins of something it reminds me of, especially the title of a book where I’ve read the same idea. Also, for books with equations I’ll often work the problem in the margin.
J. Scott:
March 6th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
I can’t imagine reading a book and not writing in the margins—some of my books are bloody, some escape with mere underlining, but most are annotated for future reference, or because something caught my eye. Fiction falls into this category, too. Sandor Marai’s moving Embers, which I read many years and try to read once a year whether I need to or not, is truly a "mess." BTW, I use pencil these days as ink will bleed on some of the cheaper grade paper. Excellent post!
Charles Cameron:
March 7th, 2011 at 8:54 am
I buy most of my books in thrifts to keep my habit within reasonable bounds, and loathe it when my eye is drawn to someone else’s idea of a memorable passage, so I avoid buying books with markings except if they’re very relevant and very very difficult to find — or the marking were made by someone whose thought interests me.
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I have a Republic in Greek with facing page annotations by a student at my old college who studied Plato under Nettleship in the 1890s, bought when I was 17 or so, before I went up to Oxford myself. And I once had a few of Charles Muses‘ books with his markings — early computer savant? covert genius? mad hatter?
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I used to place a small ink or pencil dot in the margin next to interesting thoughts myself, and keep a list of page numbers on the rear free end paper — but I didn’t like it. I’m not big on much of the universe of products, but the day I first discovered post-it book flags was a day that lives in champagne!
Nathaniel T. Lauterbach:
March 7th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Hi Mark.
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Fun little post, this is.
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When I read a traditional book, I tend to scrawl marginalia, much in the same way you do. I’m a big fan of the practice, as it turns the reading of the book into more of a dialectic between the author and the reader.
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However, I purchased a Kindle for deployments (instead of lugging around a medium-sized duffel bag full of anticipated reading for a 7-month stretch, I carry a Kindle loaded with countless more volumes than the duffel can carry). The portability is great, but the marginalia is marginal, at best. Sure, I can scrawl notes, but it’s just not the same. Dare I say that perhaps the use of screen media makes the reading experience LESS interactive, instead of MORE? In the realm of marginalia, that’s definitely the case.
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Another little kindle gripe: the lack of page numbers. Instead there is the "location" which is much less elegant and more clunky.
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One last note on marginalia: I occasionally have purchased used books through Alibris and other online used-book sellers (that’s how I purchased my copy of "How To Read A Book"). Occasionally an erudite readers have written interesting notes in those used books, too.
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Semper Fidelis,
NTL
zen:
March 7th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Gracias! This is becoming a festival of nerdism…..as I intended. 😉
Lexington Green:
March 7th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
A dot in the margin. A page number and a note at the end, as a sort of personal index in case I want to go back and find something.
Charles Cameron:
March 7th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Neat topic, Zen — thanks!
MMaineiac:
March 8th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
This post was shocking to me. I grew up in a small mill town in Maine. All the books I read growing up came from the public library, marking in them would have been a cardinal sin. To this day I can not bring myself to mark in a book.
I did see some time ago an article about colonial period publications purposely printed with bigger margins and being considered more valuable depending upon who had gotten their hands on it prior.