Anybody catch Tim Parks’ New York Review of Books blog post, A Weapon for Readers? The weapon in question? A pen! For writing in your books. It is clear where Parks stands on marginalia. He advocates reading not with a pen nearby or on the table next to you or in your bag, but reading with a pen in your hand.
But how is this a weapon? Parks thinks we have too much respect for the written word and too little awareness of what words are doing. We are too passive, too accepting. We let novelists get away with too much. Reading with a pen in hand makes one more alert and a more active reader.
He has tested this on his students. None of them marked up their books. He told them they had to. Not only did they have to mark up the text, but they had to make three or four comments on every page, at least one critical and if it’s aggressive, even better. A question mark should be placed next to anything you find suspect, underline anything you appreciate, and freely write things like “splendid” or “bullshit” in the margins too.
“A pen is not a magic wand,” he admits, but he found that this experiment with his students helped them improve their reading. Of course writing in library books is not encouraged, that’s just rude. But your own books? I get the feeling Parks wants them to look well read by the time you get to the end — folded pages, writing all over the place, a cracked spine.
Parks is rather aggressive with his pen as weapon idea:
There is something predatory, cruel even, about a pen suspended over a text. Like a hawk over a field, it is on the lookout for something vulnerable. Then it is a pleasure to swoop and skewer the victim with the nib’s sharp point. The mere fact of holding the hand poised for action changes our attitude to the text.
It makes it seem like reading is an adversarial relationship between author, book, and reader. I don’t approach reading like that. For me reading is like dating. Sometimes I am looking for love. Sometimes I just want a one night stand. Sometimes we don’t even make it to first base and other times it is an out of the park home run. Now and then I just want to flirt. And then there are the deep and serious encounters when you plumb the depth of your being. I could go on, but you get the idea. Even with a pen in my hand it never transforms into a weapon. I’m just taking notes so I can gossip about all the details with my friends later.
I thought it kind of interesting that Parks’s post showed up so soon after the digital is killing marginalia article. I suppose this is now a subtopic of the print versus digital debate. I wonder how long it will drag on before there is nothing left to say and everything becomes repetitive? Actually, I think it might already be on it’s last gasp. But like a mortally wounded character in a Shakespeare tragedy, it will have some very long speeches before the curtain falls on it.
Yes, I read the Parks’ essay and found myself in agreement with one exception. He fails to mention the additional benefit of copying the underlined passages to a commonplace book to review and/or use later in something they may write. This is the real benefit of pen or highlighting in my experience.
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Richard, so do you transfer all of your notes into a commonplace book or just the ones that really resonate?
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I can imagine finding it valuable to do this as an exercise, but I’d hate to do it during all of my reading. In general, I would mind very much marking up my own books; plus, there are enough reasons to dislike books without making yourself angry at them on purpose.
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Jenny, not all books are equal to being marked up. I mean, could you imagine annotating Fifty Shades of Grey? Well, actually, that might be fun to do, but you know what I mean. I imagine the reason behind why we are reading a particular books matters too. Reading just to relax and escape why would you want a pen in your hand? I don’t like the way Parks is so aggressive in his reading, I’m not out to destroy a book when I read!
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I like your ‘Make Love Not War’ attitude to reading!
I often wish that I could be a devil-may-care marker-up of books, but I cannot really bear to. My A-level texts are the exception, and a constant reminder to myself of the horrors of my own attempts at marginalia (how many times can one underline a bit of Hamlet and write ‘irony’ beside it? Many, apparently).
Also, every time I reread a book, I experience it differently. I don’t want my past self butting in with comments I no longer find interesting or useful, maybe pushing me away from a new interpretation.
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I couldn’t do this with every book but perhaps its worth trying very occasionally and it it is an interesting way of getting students to really tackle the text!
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Ian, no, not with every book. That would be exhausting I think. And since for the most part I read for pleasure, why would I want the experience to be tiring? But once in a while it is fun. For students though, most definitely an excellent thing to do.
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Ian and Stefanie, I agree with you, it IS a very good exercise and specifically if you’re studying a book or you’re a writer. And I see it as a fault in myself really that I hate writing in books.
I was intrigued by the two photographs in the article, examples of Parks’s and David Foster Wallace’s annotations. To me, the annotations dominated the text. I suppose it comes back to that aggressive attitude which Parks writes about. Perhaps I could try being questioning, and with a lightly held pencil? 🙂 That might be more comfortable. It’s good to shake things up occasionally, including reading.
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Helen, I understand having a hard time writing in books, I do too a lot of the time. Should I happen to buy a book in hardcover I can rarely bring myself to write in it. Paperbacks and secondhand books are much easier to break through the don;t write in your books barrier.
You are right, those photos are interesting, aren’t they? When I do write in my books I try to make it unobtrusive but Parks and Foster Wallace are very aggressive. When I do write in my books I never use a pen, it’s always a pencil, usually red otherwise I find the regular pencil kind of blends in a bit too much. I have a blue pencil too but my husband stole it from me. Been thinking lately it might be fun to try some different colors for a change.
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Helen, thanks! For a long time after finishing college I refused to mark in any book, it was too much like school. But as time has passed, I find I more often will write in my books. Though the last couple of years I have been borrowing more books from the library then buying them so there hasn’t been all that much marking up going on.
It can be horrifying to encounter your own inane comments later, but I find it amusing more often than not. And I do enjoy rereading and having those old annotations there. All my Jane Austen books hold the evidence of multiple readings and I find it really interesting to see what caught my attention each time.
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I’m glad you specified not to write in library books because I get grumpy about that! It seems like half of the books I get from the university library are covered in other people’s (not very insightful) commentary! As a class assignment to get students to really engage with their reading though, I think it is a great idea.
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biblioglobal, it’s pretty annoying to borrow a book from the library and have it be covered in writing and underlining. So distracting! I have a high school teacher to thank for making it ok to write in my own books. She regularly assigned us to mark up our books — every 5 pages we had to find something that revealed a theme or other important idea about the book — and then we actually had to turn in the books for her to look at them along with a short explanation about what we learned from our annotations. She was a fantastic teacher.
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What???? Does he realize how expensive school books are at the university level? Does he not know that most students (okay…not me…I couldn’t part with mine) need to sell those books at the end of the year hoping to recoup a little dinero to buy the next term’s required books? Books in good condition, unmarked, will fetch a much better price. If someone actually *wants* to write in their books, I say go for it. I did it all the time. But to make it a requirement is simply goofy. (And as a parent who had three kids to put through university, I would say he owes me money.)
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Grad, ah well, his students are English/Italian translation students so their books are literary texts, much cheaper than law books more like $20 instead of $200 🙂
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The process requires the reader to slow down and think; it makes an impression on the page and in the mind. I have books that I enjoy reading over the comments and connections I’ve made in the margins. i.e. ” reminiscent of Faulkner’s lang.” or “would this connect to Eliot’s ‘a penny for the old guy’?” As a student and teacher the process was an aid to thought and memory, I still do a lot of writing in the margin with nonfiction, but little with fiction any longer–even when I probably should. I do highlight and make notes on my Kindle, reminders of things I want to check or connect, but I almost never do it any longer in fiction books any longer.
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jenclair, interesting you no longer annotate fiction. I suppose it is because your reasons for reading have changed? I do agree, it is much easier to mark up nonfiction even when casually reading.
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My approach is the same as yours. I often read with a Pencil in hand, but I try and make small notations–mostly just a mark for me to know what to return to or a small comment. I want my marks for remembering plot points or something special in the text, but rarely do I feel like I am arguing with an author over what they are writing about. Not that I am lazy (okay, sometimes I am), but it seems like too much work for most of the books I read…. But I am all for marking up text (but in pencil…. 🙂 ).
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Danielle, it’s nice to have those marks as reference points, isn’t it? And I don’t think it is so much laziness as it is all books not needing the same level of attention. At least that’s what I’m going with! 🙂
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Ha, your comment about Shakespeare and his tragedies did make me laugh!! Tim Parks needs to hang out in my university library and read some of the dumb hostile comments made in the margins of books by students. Rarely do they come off well against the printed argument, and as is so often the case with hostile comments, they just say a lot about the critic and not much about the book. I want to write above them all ‘Be careful! Your ego is showing!’ I’m all for writing in books as you go along, if you want to be extra attentive in reading, but the attacking thing is not something I can condone. Helen’s comment about your making love not war policy cracked me up, but I’m right on board with it!
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Litlove, the abuse authors and books in university libraries take from students! I love death scenes in Shakespeare especially. My wish to shout “die already!” adds a bit of levity I think 😉 I wonder if the aggression is a male tendency? Or maybe I just made a huge gender generalization that I will burn for later in order to distract everyone from realizing what a book slut I am!
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