Ep 104: Learn from the Best The Book Is Yours When You Write in Its Margins
"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.\u201d ~ Stephen King\nYou\u2019ll hear that advice a lot. You want to write? Read a lot and write a lot. Simple as that.\n\nBut is it that simple?\n\nDo we simply open the book, read and enjoy the story or helpful ideas, and automatically absorb the content? Or do we need to read with a plan or a strategy of some kind?\n\nIs there a way to take in and retain the content, be inspired by the style, and learn methods to apply to our own work?\n\nIs there a writerly way to read?\n\nI think there is. So do many others. Let\u2019s start with the content. How do we grasp it, absorb it, retain it?\nPlagued by Lack of Retention?\nSomeone asked me the other day if I\u2019d read Great Expectations. I had. I read it and remember enjoying it. But I couldn\u2019t recall much detail at all. There's Pip, right? And Miss Havisham sitting around in that ratty old wedding dress? That\u2019s about all I could dredge up.\n\nI've read lots of books\u2014I was an English Major, for crying out loud! So I read and wrote response papers about gobs of great literature, countless classics, over the course of my studies\u2014but my recall?\n\nAfter years of academic effort, it feels like only shadowy memories flit across my mind for many titles I was assigned, maybe a scene or an interaction between characters\u2014that tattered old wedding dress of Miss Havisham\u2019s, for example. I wish more works were locked in in their full glory, the plot, themes, and characters remembered more accurately, beginning to end.\nMake a Book a Part of Yourself: Write in It\nAs a young adult, post-college, I encountered Mortimer Adler\u2019s How to Read a Book written with Charles Van Doren and subtitled \u201cThe Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading.\u201d Adler wrote:\nFull ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it\u2014which comes to the same thing\u2014is by writing in it. (49)\nFull ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself\u2026and yourself a part of it.\n\nHow do we make it part of ourselves? You heard it. Adler insisted that to \u201cown\u201d a book, we must write in it.\n\n\nResistance to Marginalia\nMy parents never let me write in a book. The mere thought of marking a page was an abomination. Sacrilege. Verboten.\n\nMy parents love to read and have strong retention, yet they never marked up books, at least not that I saw. I had been taught what Anne Fadiman calls a \u201ccourtly love\u201d of books. They insisted I treat the book itself\u2014the printed book and its pages\u2014with the utmost respect. Leave the pages clean and free of marks for your next reading or for someone else\u2019s. Let them enjoy it without any marginalia to distract them. Our family's books are pristine.\n\nIn Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader, Fadiman explains the attitude of the courtly, Platonic love of books versus a carnal love of them:\nThe most permanent, and thus to the courtly lover the most terrible, thing one can leave in a book is one's own words. Even I would never write in an encyclopedia (except perhaps with a No. 3 pencil, which I'd later erase). But I've been annotating novels and poems\u2014transforming monologues into dialogues\u2014ever since I learned to read. (Fadiman 41)\nIn college, I struggled to highlight and underline key passages and information, even though I could plainly see from the used textbooks I purchased that everyone did it. Eventually, I caved and with pencil lightly marked passages I thought I should note for tests and papers. Each time I underlined a passage or circled a word or wrote a comment or drew an arrow, I felt\u2026naughty.\nDialogue with Authors\nBut I needed to dialogue with the authors. I needed to enter the conversation. I needed to write in books.\n\nMy first attempts at marginalia helped me read with closer attention and increased interest. My faint, shy marks documented my simplistic questions and chronicled my confusion; they reflected my ad...