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On the virtues of writing (in books)...
Feb. 11th, 2006 08:52 amA few scant hours ago, I noted that I had read How Proust Can Change Your Life without underlining anything in the book or making any notes. That triggered some memories overnight.
As a baseline, I'm sure we all share the common experience of being taught, from a very young age, never to write in books! Especially books that we are expected to learn anything from, that is, textbooks. By the time most of us are in high school, teachers and librarians have instilled in us a primal fear of writing in books. Parents reinforce this, as this is the way they were taught as well.
I remember, as a young boy, going to see the neighborhood doctor who had his office on the ground floor of his townhouse just down the street. During a lull in the proceedings one day, I was looking at the walls of his office proper, which were lined with medical books, and asked "Did you really read all of these books?"
It's funny, but sometimes visitors to the house ask me the same question, as there are quite a few books around here, but I digress...
He smiled - as only doctors can - and proceeded to demonstrate to me that he did: every word in any chosen book was underlined.
Later, in college, I found that the chairman of my department loved to scribble in books. In fact, one day, out of the clear blue sky, he lectured us on the fine art of scribbling in books.
Given a book that was, truly, bought and paid for by us, he reasoned that like any new car - in fact, worse than any new car - the book was now worth next to nothing as an item of commerce, so it essentially represented what the bean counters call a "sunk cost."
So what were we waiting for?
If a thought hits you while you're reading a book you own - if something the author says finds more than a hollow echo in your mind - write it down! And what better place than right there, in the book? Did you run across something of interest? Underline it! Highlight it! Or else risk losing it. Jot something down in the margin about your reaction. Turn the book sideways, if you have to, or write upside down.
If you develop a real, honest-to-goodness brainstorm, and there isn't enough room in the margin or between paragraphs, continue on an endpaper, he said, but don't lose the thought, telling us that a couple of hundred years ago, there was a mathematician who was supposed to have had a brainstorm about a certain proposition while reading a book, only to let it pass, and that the theorem remained unproven.
Dr. C was referring to Pierre de Fermat, who wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain" in the margin of a copy of Bachet's translation of Diophantus's Arithmetica. What it was that he said he found a proof for became known in math circles as Fermat's Last Theorem, which states that the equation xn + yn = zn has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2. While it is very likely that Fermat was wrong (the proof emerged after more than 300 years of effort by the best mathematical minds in the world), still... yet I digress once again...
Much conventional wisdom in college advises against buying used textbooks that have been written in or highlighted, as not only do such purchases tend to impact the sales of new, overpriced books, but such writing/highlighting tends to unconsciously draw your attention to what the previous owner thought was important (which would theoretically be unfortunate if said owner was a "D" student!).
Indeed, there is something to be said for the traditional approach to reading texts with a critical eye, that is, the use of a separate notebook, index cards, etc., that goes beyond fine sentiments on the development of a mentally disciplined approach to reading. I have seen - particularly in the former Soviet Union - notebooks that are the work of very accomplished people, notebooks that summarize vast amounts of knowledge in a concise, neat, and exhaustive form; basically, the kind of product you'd want to see if you told someone to condense the subject into an easy-to-carry package.
I have some notes like that, on oscillations and waves, which included a breathtaking section on quantum states and Schrödinger's equation. Would that I had that kind of time to devote to any enterprise (outside of work) today!
Some time ago, I picked up a textbook from the 1940s, if memory serves, of Victorian poetry. The former owner was a scribbler, and I've got to tell you, the scribbles are almost as interesting as the printed text! Unknown words were defined, moods identified, factoids inserted. The extra writing increased my enjoyment of the book.
However, habit is a hard thing to break. While I was reading the Proust book, I'd find myself running into something that made me think, or set me swinging inside a private jungle gym of concepts, eventually returning to the real world and the book in my hands, and continuing to read (yeah, I know, my bad).
I've got to cultivate the art of "defacing" my books. After all, what am I saving them for?
Cheers...
As a baseline, I'm sure we all share the common experience of being taught, from a very young age, never to write in books! Especially books that we are expected to learn anything from, that is, textbooks. By the time most of us are in high school, teachers and librarians have instilled in us a primal fear of writing in books. Parents reinforce this, as this is the way they were taught as well.
I remember, as a young boy, going to see the neighborhood doctor who had his office on the ground floor of his townhouse just down the street. During a lull in the proceedings one day, I was looking at the walls of his office proper, which were lined with medical books, and asked "Did you really read all of these books?"
It's funny, but sometimes visitors to the house ask me the same question, as there are quite a few books around here, but I digress...
He smiled - as only doctors can - and proceeded to demonstrate to me that he did: every word in any chosen book was underlined.
Later, in college, I found that the chairman of my department loved to scribble in books. In fact, one day, out of the clear blue sky, he lectured us on the fine art of scribbling in books.
Given a book that was, truly, bought and paid for by us, he reasoned that like any new car - in fact, worse than any new car - the book was now worth next to nothing as an item of commerce, so it essentially represented what the bean counters call a "sunk cost."
So what were we waiting for?
If a thought hits you while you're reading a book you own - if something the author says finds more than a hollow echo in your mind - write it down! And what better place than right there, in the book? Did you run across something of interest? Underline it! Highlight it! Or else risk losing it. Jot something down in the margin about your reaction. Turn the book sideways, if you have to, or write upside down.
If you develop a real, honest-to-goodness brainstorm, and there isn't enough room in the margin or between paragraphs, continue on an endpaper, he said, but don't lose the thought, telling us that a couple of hundred years ago, there was a mathematician who was supposed to have had a brainstorm about a certain proposition while reading a book, only to let it pass, and that the theorem remained unproven.
Dr. C was referring to Pierre de Fermat, who wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain" in the margin of a copy of Bachet's translation of Diophantus's Arithmetica. What it was that he said he found a proof for became known in math circles as Fermat's Last Theorem, which states that the equation xn + yn = zn has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2. While it is very likely that Fermat was wrong (the proof emerged after more than 300 years of effort by the best mathematical minds in the world), still... yet I digress once again...
Much conventional wisdom in college advises against buying used textbooks that have been written in or highlighted, as not only do such purchases tend to impact the sales of new, overpriced books, but such writing/highlighting tends to unconsciously draw your attention to what the previous owner thought was important (which would theoretically be unfortunate if said owner was a "D" student!).
Indeed, there is something to be said for the traditional approach to reading texts with a critical eye, that is, the use of a separate notebook, index cards, etc., that goes beyond fine sentiments on the development of a mentally disciplined approach to reading. I have seen - particularly in the former Soviet Union - notebooks that are the work of very accomplished people, notebooks that summarize vast amounts of knowledge in a concise, neat, and exhaustive form; basically, the kind of product you'd want to see if you told someone to condense the subject into an easy-to-carry package.
I have some notes like that, on oscillations and waves, which included a breathtaking section on quantum states and Schrödinger's equation. Would that I had that kind of time to devote to any enterprise (outside of work) today!
Some time ago, I picked up a textbook from the 1940s, if memory serves, of Victorian poetry. The former owner was a scribbler, and I've got to tell you, the scribbles are almost as interesting as the printed text! Unknown words were defined, moods identified, factoids inserted. The extra writing increased my enjoyment of the book.
However, habit is a hard thing to break. While I was reading the Proust book, I'd find myself running into something that made me think, or set me swinging inside a private jungle gym of concepts, eventually returning to the real world and the book in my hands, and continuing to read (yeah, I know, my bad).
I've got to cultivate the art of "defacing" my books. After all, what am I saving them for?
Cheers...
