Word: marginalia
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...interesting to learn from Jackson's book ON WHICH THIS ESSAY IS MARGINALIA, I SUPPOSE, that friends would deliberately lend Coleridge their books, knowing he would mark them up endlessly. Thus, the lenders would be getting back a book improved by Coleridge. [Unless Coleridge were high on drugs...
Other writers known for their relentless annotations were Horace Walpole, Charles Darwin, Thomas Macaulay and William Blake. I LOVE BLAKE. [I don't!] But quality that high is rare. We take a book out of the library and read the marginalia, often surly and stupid, of anonymous strangers. THANKS A HEAP! The fun, though, is to respond to them, by which we perpetuate the argument and extend the text. BACK TO HIS THESIS, AT LAST? [you're welcome...
...THIS COUNTRY? An acquaintance slithers into some self-aggrandizing prevarication. I write, LIAR! A nice, honest moment occurs in the new, good movie Traffic when the U.S. drug czar, Michael Douglas, falters in the middle of a false and insincere speech, and you can see his conscience writing marginalia on his claptrap. [If Catherine Zeta-Jones changed her name to Rita and married Derek Jeter, would she be Rita Zeta-Jeter...
...Marginalia create the presence of more than one voice at a time SEE COMPUTER MESSAGES, and this cacophony simulates the ways our minds work. The difference between thought and speech--the inchoate mess in our minds as opposed to the crispy words that emerge--suggests that we live with a number of voices at once. SPOOKY! If we really wanted to get spooky about it, we might wonder how to tell the texts of our lives from the margins. [Give it a rest...
What I am writing at this moment may be the marginalia to feelings of loss and pain that do not appear in the sentence. The feelings of loss and pain may constitute the text of my life for which all sentences, written or spoken, create a defense or rebuke...