Marginalia: Reflecting on the reading culture of print

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THE AUTHORITY OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Marginalia:

The cultural impact of digital technology is clearly visible in our written communication. Like so many other modes of interac- tion, the book is being adapted to the digital culture. Letters are represented using binary codes rather than ink, page flipping is replaced by page-flipping simulations. A digital book culture entails a digital reading culture: People’s interaction with text is bound to change with a new medium. The increasing drive for digitization has led some to ask whether there may be as- pects of the reading culture of print which are worth preserving.

Back in 2007, when designer Erik Schmitt was working on the first generation of Kindle e-readers, a selection of books from his deceased grandfather’s library came into his possession. As Erik flipped through the books, he became intrigued by the extensive annotations his grandfather had made in the margins, and how they provided insight into the thought processes of a person who had passed away. It occurred to him that this simple type of interaction with text was a unique quality of physical books.

The Pages Project, a website dedicated to the marginalia people write in books, developed from this initial observation. Over the next couple of years Erik gathered annotated pages, the majority of which came from a free bookstore in his hometown of Berkeley, California. He then presented these pages on a website, reproduc- ing elements of print culture in a digital environment. It has been expanded by allowing people from around the world to submit their own pages and it has since been covered by publications including The New Yorker and O magazine, and won the Webby award in 2015.

‘Every page tells two stories’ the website informs the reader while it loads. As Erik explains, the statement summarizes the concept of the website: There was a slight load time for the site and rather than just utilize a classic loading icon we wanted something meaningful. This statement refers to the fact that each page contains the author’s intended content and the commentary of a reader. In effect, two stories.

Reflecting on the reading culture of print

An interview with Erik Schmitt, creator of thepagesproject.com.

Interview conducted by Óskar Völundarson and Andrea Pérez Millas

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Has your experience in developing e-reading technology given you greater insight into which elements of the traditional reading experience these techniques can and cannot reproduce?

The greatest asset of e-readers like the Kindle is that they give the reader access to vast catalogues of reading material. But ironically, overwhelming volume is precisely what makes e-readers poor landscapes for exploring the marginalia left by individual readers. Kindle users can share notes and highlights with other users and are generating huge amounts of digital marginalia. But who will ever spend the energy to explore these huge digital resources? The aesthetic experience of discovering marginalia on the printed page is key as well: The discoveries you make flipping through printed books, the blue ink on the paper yellowed with age, the surprise encounters with another person’s insights and observations.

The digital experience is cold and mechanical in comparison.

How does this project contribute to the study of marginalia?

The study of marginalia (such as it is) primarily focuses on books that have been annotated by famous people. As is the case with most historical research, the common person is ignored. The Pages Project examines the marginalia of ordinary people, their insights and their struggles with the material. While print has been the dominant publishing technology for centuries, digital technology appeared to eclipse the printed book in a single decade. It seemed important to reflect on annotation, a unique quality of the physical book, and show a few compelling examples of the dialogue between the multiple readers and the author.

Which aspects of this project did you think would be most interesting for users? After all, you knew your grandfather, but the readers of the web page don’t know the contributors.

The goal was to find pages that would be compelling regardless of who the author of the marginalia was. My intent was to include a broad range of marks and notations: Some humorous, some analytical, and some simply posing questions about the material. I intentionally only included one page from my grandfather in the project and didn’t attribute it to him, since this project is not about singling out individuals.

When you were reading your grandfather’s notes, did his character as you knew him come through to you, or did you see new aspects of his persona?

Reading my grandfather’s notes mostly reinforced my existing sense of who he was. His intelligence and curiosity were reflected in his notations and translations. The most compelling aspect of it was the sense that I was having a conversation with a person no longer living.

Could you recognize any patterns in how people annotate and/or certain types of annotators?

The bulk of the notations were made by people trying to make sense of the material or offering commentary on it. The act of offering commentary or criticism is fascinating. Does the annotator assume that the book will change hands and that his/her comments will be read by someone else?

Or is it just a gesture, an urge to express oneself on the printed page? One pattern was very clear: Serious literature was the most fertile territory in which to find marginalia, while genres like horror, science fiction, romance and pulp fiction were entirely devoid of it. This raises many questions about the act of reading and the different reasons for why we read.

TXT 2016: POWERFUL PAGES

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Reading serious literature can be challenging and the marginalia often reveals the struggles taking place within the reader’s mind. On the last page of a copy of The Bear by William Faulkner I found a dia- logue between two different readers taking place next to a highlighted passage that says ‘Get out of here! Don’t touch them! Don’t touch a one of them! They’re mine!’, referring to squirrels frantically racing around a tree trunk. In the left margin someone has written in green ink: ‘what does this mean’, and below the column of text there is a response in elegant black script: ‘Man has completely lost contact with nature.

The realization of this, drives Boon into a state of frenzy.’ A dialogue is taking place between two people who are unknown to one another, across a gulf of time, as they tried to understand Faulkner’s prose.

Another annotation of a similar kind is contained in a copy of Ger- trude Stein in Paris – 1903-1907. A reader has gone through the book and underlined the instances where Stein referred to herself and then added up the total at the bottom of each page. Was the reader trying to tease out meaning behind Stein’s literary technique of repetition? Was he or she analysing Stein’s work in the manner of Jason Lucarelli, who states that ‘Each repetition with variation carries its own emphasis, its own context, and as a “kind of one,” points back to the whole of where it came. As a rule, each sameness should carry its own difference.’¹ Were they trying to find evidence of this within her work? Whatever the case, the reader was clearly using this technique in an attempt to understand the material. Conversely, the contention that the act of reading pulp or genre fiction is primarily to entertain or pass the time seems to be borne out by the lack of marginalia in those works.

Finally, do you have any plans to expand or change The Pages Project?

The University of Virginia has reached out to me about a collaboration to explore using the study of marginalia as a possible argument for why we shouldn’t purge our libraries of physical books. I’m exploring turning the project into a printed book. Seeing the content travel full circle from print to digital and back into print would be fascinating.

Note.

1 Lucarelli, J. ‘Using Everything: Pattern Making in Gertrud Stein’s “Melanctha,” Robert Walser’s “Nothing at all,” and Sam Lipsyte’s “The Worng Arm”’. Numéro Cinq. 8 August 2013. Web. 6 July 2016.

Other websites on the subject of marginalia Andrew Stauffer’s booktraces.org Jon Gitelson’s thegit.net/marginalia