Just met with a student who has never tried writing marginalia. We had a good 20-minute conversation about what writing marginalia as you read (I forgot about the use of it in re-reading…drat) does for you. We looked at the years of accreted marginalia in my copies of “Song of Myself” and James’s essay, “The Art of Fiction.”
The reason it even came up, marginalia, is that my student–a very good student–had noticed another student’s extensive side commentary and underlining and noticed this precisely because he, himself has never tried it.
It made me remember — marginalia writing is “natural” to me now, but there was a time when it was new to me, too. I’m guessing that we ought to be “teaching” this in literature classes, maybe by just occasionally making a pitch for it? I think I used to do that but I have fallen away from it. I’m going to try to get back to it.
when i taught 8th grade, i required it for the first novel of the year. students had to buy their books and were graded on their “marginalia participation.” we had a whole lesson about what kinds of questions and notes they should write – most of them had never heard of it or had been indoctrinated with the evils of defacing literature.
it was one of the activities my students and i really enjoyed working on together. 🙂
sorry that I just now saw this reply…
What a great assignment. I hadn’t thought about defacing angle. I guess that’s true and not only from the “great literature” side of things. If you wrote in any book in public school, you were in trouble.