too many Daves

Great article by Liz on one of my favorite subjects. (I mean, what is this, other than marginalia out of control…) This bit:

When a consumer encounters marginalia in a used book, it has the potential to change one’s perception of a book’s value. Cathy Marshall, a Microsoft researcher, found that university students evaluated textbooks before purchasing so that they can bring home the book with the smartest notes.

Reminded me of Andrei Codrescu on the Kindle:

I don’t know about you, but I always hated underlined passages in used books. They derail my private enjoyment….When somebody offers perception of what’s important, something moronic, usually…And this thing on my Kindle…something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

Of course, if the people making the marks mean something to you, reading a marked-up book can be a wonderful experience.

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From “Marginalia” by Billy Collins:

Yet the one I think of most often,

the one that dangles from me like a locket,

was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye

I borrowed from the local library

one slow, hot summer.

I was just beginning high school then,

reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,

and I cannot tell you

how vastly my loneliness was deepened,

how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,

when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears

and next to them, written in soft pencil-

by a beautiful girl, I could tell,

whom I would never meet-

“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”