Max Lee's, Analyzing Margins, In Error for The Wesleyan Argus, considers the marginalia present in some of David Foster Wallace's collection at The Harry Ransom Center (via the research of Mike Miley, Reading Wallace Reading):
[...]The satisfaction in reading Wallace’s marginalia has less to do with wanting to gain insights about his writing than it does with wanting to see something marked “DW,” something intended as private that has been distorted for public display. Reading is, after all, a private act, taking place away from other people. Even if something is read in public, the print is hidden from the view of everyone but the reader.
[...]
This is not to say that there is no value in researching marginalia. As the Harvard proposal states, marginalia can be of benefit to historians analyzing cultural phenomena. By comparing how people have written in books in the past to how they write in them now—what instruments (pencils or pens) they use, what they write about—marginalia can say a great deal about our past and our present. These analyses, though, only provide information because they are rooted in broad phenomena, in how entire cultures function.[...]
Continue reading, Analyzing Margins, In Error.
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