Marginalia & Symbols: Armchair Method

How I approach marking up my books—or not.

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 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.

Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book

Marginalia is a source of conflict for me. On the one hand, it is helpful for getting back into books I haven’t spent time with in a while: my markings point out pages worth revisiting; sometimes I find that a grangerized conversation in the margins has enriched the text with supplemental insights; many hours have been saved in my research and writing by notes alerting me to lines I’d like to bring into work of my own. On the other hand, sometimes my marginalia winds itself around the text block like a strangler fig, throttling the meaning of a text; my erratic scribbles eclipse the author’s words with my own; many a fresh reading has been robbed from me by my past readings. Sometimes marginalia help me get deeper into a book, and sometimes it’s just me getting in my own way. In my younger academic years, I was more heavy-handed with my marginalia: books were tools and records of my thoughts and connections. But lately I’ve been treading more lightly in my pages, hoping to leave fewer traces when I move on from them. Here’s my method for writing in my books.

Keep Things Light

My main rule with marginalia is to keep things light. First of all, when it comes to materials: Don’t be a barbarian. Use a pencil. After publication, most authors still have something they’d like to rewrite, remove, or add in their books; to paraphrase the poet Paul Valery: books are never finished, only abandoned. If the people who set these words down in ink still want to change them, how much more so will we feel about our own ephemeral jottings? Every time I reread a book, there’s inevitably some note or underlining from a past reading I erase. My favorite tool for the job is the Blackwing 602 used by Steinbeck and Nabokov: it has a clean, dark line when you need to make a note, which is just as easily laid down as it is easily erased. Ultimately, any pencil will do, so long as you can erase it. While good notes are good, the ideal is not to need them at all. Pencils help make explicit connections we should remember. Erasers return them to being implicit once they’re understood.

This freedom to erase, to deprioritize, and even to forget notes has been so cathartic for my reading, it’s got me thinking about whether all my notebooks should be done in pencil. Though I must confess to being a bit biased about them; for many years, they conjured up nothing but ideas of schoolboys and smudges. In contrast, pens and their dark inks gave a nobility, authority, permanence, and solidity to what was written. But when I look back at many of my journals and notebooks, I see the lion’s share of things I’ve written don’t need to be preserved in ink. Since much of my writing has outlived its use, I’d love to erase or burn much of it. Whether or not I bring pencils into my journal and notebooks instead of my pens and ink, I always have and always will do marginalia in pencil.

While I have different system for dealing with library books, there’s a sense in which all books are just on loan. One day, when the world is done with me, I’ll be done with my books. When my ownership of the books expires, they’ll be handed over to someone else, and I’d like that new reader to be able to enjoy them in as fresh a manner as possible—without my notes getting in the way of their conversation with the author. Pencils are a sign that I take both my thoughts and my ownership lightly.

Another way I keep things lightweight is the symbols I use. Underlinings strongly cue the eyes and tell them to rerun a line now. This demand on our attention means they should be used with caution; I find they only work for one to four lines at a time. For anything more than that, I tend to use a vertical arrow or vertical lines in the margin to signify longer sections. (Again, erasing one line is easier than erasing five or more.) Sometimes I don’t even need to use a vertical line, because circling a name, object, or keyword is enough to let me know what concept dominates that section. If I need to get a little more structural, there are some standard symbols I use for outlining sections or parts of an argument (I, II, III or 1, 2, 3), or showing options (a, b, c) an author presents. Finally, I don’t use any marginalia for novel or rare words; those get logged in a blank page at the front or back of the book for looking up. (More often I collected these on a slip of paper I use for a bookmark, but slips are another conversation entirely.) In any case, the bulk of my marginalia happens with this set of symbols I’ve been using for several decades now:

My Symbols: ☆ ✓ – × ꩜ ! ≈

☆ : This is The Point. This is why I read this chapter or even this book. If I remember nothing else, I should remember this. It’s okay if there are several stars in a book or even in the same chapter: like real stars, sometimes ideas cluster into constellations. But in general, I’m fairly stingy with stars.

✓ : This is An Important Point, and you could have many in a chapter. Often its significance only becomes clear after finishing a section or finishing the book, where I can then see how a point fits into the whole. Many checkpoints have been turned into stars when I see at the end how An Important Point was actually The Point. Otherwise, the handful of checkmarks serve as the guideposts for orienting myself in while revisiting a work.

– : This is a Mere Point. These ancillary markings help retrace one’s steps through a story or an argument. Sometimes several dashes can serve as the setup for a checkmark’s delivery; premises in an argument; ingredients in the writer’s recipe. I tend to be generous with these: they’re pretty lightweight and so they don’t take me out of reading too much; I almost don’t even notice myself putting these little notches in. They’re often helpful footholds in the moment, but they’re also the most frequently erased symbols upon subsequent rereadings.

× - This is Not The Point. A character has been countered and gone off the rails. A fallacious argument is being put down. A character gets put down or put in their place by someone else. Something was said wrong or done wrong at this point. Whatever you take away from the book, the author hopes it’s not this.

꩜ : This is Absurdity. Calling out what’s wrong with a situation or putting down an argument isn’t always enough; sometimes an author has to show how a flaw in an argument leads to ridiculous conclusions or a character tragically unraveling himself. Often these spiral down the margin, just as things spiral out of control. Novels abound in these, since that form of story gets us inside the heads of so many great characters with flawed (i.e. “human”) logic and strong emotions pulling them off the path the author is trying to keep us on. They’re like an ×, but more entertaining.

! : This is a Reveal or Action. Our character has reached a turning point. New information has come to light. While checkmarks and dashes might cause me to nod my head and say, “Well of course, that just makes sense…”, or “Naturally, that logically follows…”, the exclamation point demands surprise and shock. Something happened and things are different now! Paging through from ! to ! tends to be especially helpful in reestablishing the plot in my mind by each of its major events.

≈ : This is Beautifully Stated. Maybe the writer employs a poignant analogy or metaphor. Maybe the syllables of the sentences flow in a cadence that aspires more to music than writing. Even if these sentences have no relation to the overarching argument or plot, they still exemplify the art of words. When life is dull and I’m in need of delight, I flip through pages and keep my eyes open for these wavy lines, and they never fail to serve up some joy.

Here are a few pages from my well-loved copy of Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, which show all of these symbols at work:

Take Yourself Lightly

Like music, reading is a temporal art. Without time, it does not exist. Within this time, a single reading session contains many rhythms: our eyes move back and forth line-by-line; our hands turn the pages; the clock ticks and tocks from the mantle; our breath rises and falls; our eyes blink and refresh themselves; we periodically get a glass of water; we look out the window. Amid all of these, marginalia must find its own rhythm and its place in these rhythms; it must join the dance and not trip over its feet. If a musician stops playing, the music ceases to sound. Likewise, the reader must not interrupt the performance of reading, lest the author’s world vanish into the empty air.

Our notes may come in handy later on, but not if they disrupt all the syncopated polyrhythms happening now. Don’t mistake laborious underlining for active reading. Marginalia is supposed to point out significant moments or ideas in a book. But if we cannot remember them without our notes, how significant were they really? Frankly, one can fall into vicious cycle with notes: we need the notes because we were too busy making the notes to attend to what was being said. Don’t let the tail wag the dog.

Set the pencil down when you read. Before you want mark something, pause and listen for the beat of those words; hear how they pulse with all the other rhythms in this reading session. Let the phrase repeat itself a few times. And if you do mark it, be sure to come in on the beat and don’t let your solo drag on. Let the band play on. Then maybe you’ll catch yourself humming the tune to yourself later on; the quotes, the story, the lines will play themselves in you without sheet music of your notes. You’ll be off book.

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Links

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren,

Blackwing 602 pencils

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis

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