Introducing the Noted Lab: Ask Me Anything
Does Edgar Allen Poe want me to write in an antique edition of his works?
Welcome to the midweek newsletter for paid subscribers! The usual postscripts haven’t gone away, but I thought it might be fun to mix it up with a Noted-style version of AMA (ask me anything). I’ve gotten fascinating questions from subscribers that I can’t wait to answer!
I’m calling this feature “The Noted Lab” because I imagine it as an exploratory space where we can dive into practical questions to get at the deeper issues of how we take notes today. Let the exploration begin!
If you have a question—about something related to note-taking or writing or anything else—send me an email (notedbee@gmail.com) with the subject line “Noted AMA.”
I’m very excited about this first question from, “D,” a Noted subscriber! It’s quite the moral quandary—and it sent me down a rabbit hole, thinking about how we determine value in books. Here’s the question:
I recently spent more than I should have on an antique ten-volume set of collected writings of Edgar Allan Poe, copyright 1908.
I specifically sought them because I wanted to read his writings on Marginalia. I was inspired by you. These writings are in the set. But I’m torn. I want to make notes. I want to record my thoughts. But I hesitate to make graphite notes in an antique set.
I posted this question to an online group. I would say that the opinion is mixed, but the overwhelming opinion is that I shouldn't make notations. But aren't the notes what Poe would have wanted?
I have no intention of selling these books. They will die with me, and have no heirs. I’m an early retired gay academic who has published some hard science. Now I write personal journals about the schizoaffective disorder and the associated delusions that caused me to retire early. And I dabble in fiction, poetry, and very amateur visual art.
I have no lasting monetary hopes for this investment, but I sometimes imagine my thoughts will be worthwhile after my death. I realize such a hope is vain, foolish, and pointless. But I often maintain the hope.
I respect your writing. I’m just curious. If you were me, would you write in these volumes?
-D
I won’t bury the lede: I think you should write in Edgar Allen Poe’s books and here are three reasons why.
1) Handwriting
First, an admission: I find print far less interesting than handwriting. When I discover marginalia in a printed book, I’m almost always excited. The only exception is when I buy a used book and it has obnoxious yellow highlighting all over the place. Any other type of marginalia delights me! I find the combination of print and handwriting exceptionally interesting.
I love seeing books used as physical objects—especially nowadays when our books are less material. Your question brought to mind one of my favorite manuscripts. In my first year of graduate school, I found a 19th-century scrapbook pasted on top of an earlier commonplace book:
Now, some might say that the scrapbooker ruined the manuscript, but I think it turns the text into a fascinating historical object.1 It’s not quite the same as your situation, but it shows how interacting with a book doesn’t always ruin it. Given your care in framing the question, I suspect your marginalia would only add to the collection.
Poe, as you note, would agree with me because he loved marginalia. Poe wrote:
In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling suggested thoughts, agreements and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general. Where what I have to note is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves; taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum tragacanth paste.
Poe offers two suggestions you might consider if you’d like to soften the impact of your notes:
write in pencil rather than pen
write on slips of paper and stick them in the margins
Here are several slips of paper with Poe’s marginalia.
Along with Poe, I believe that marginalia adds to a book. It is a way of conversing across time and space with an author. If you were to write in anyone’s books, it should be Poe’s.
But my love of marginalia is probably not the most convincing argument, so let’s consider what literary theory would say about your situation.
2) “The Author is Dead”
Reader-Response Theory states that the reader’s experience of a text matters as much, if not more than, the author’s intention. In other words, a text gets its meaning through the reader’s engagement with it.1 As the theorist Roland Barthes declared: “the author is dead!”2
In your case, the author is quite literally dead, which is why you are reluctant to write in his books. Were Poe alive and still producing new works we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
This brings to mind Theodor Adorno’s critique of museums as mausoleums—places that, in his opinion, suck the vitality out of art. He writes:
Museums are like the family sepulchers of works of art. They testify to the neutralization of culture. Art treasures are hoarded in them, and their market value leaves no room for the pleasure of looking at them…3
Choosing not to write in your collection renders Poe’s volumes dead objects. By not writing in these books you deny their original purpose; moreover, you place their historical value over your present-tense desire.
So, I would argue that writing in these books is almost necessary. You bought the volumes to write in; doing so would transform them back into vital, useful objects.
3) Value
And finally, let’s consider what I believe is the central issue: how we define value. In all likelihood, writing in these books will diminish their financial value. Given that you have no heirs or financial hopes for this set, that is not your concern.
Instead, we should consider other forms of value. Isn’t enjoying one’s books a kind of profit? That is Poe’s word, actually, when he describes marginalia:
…it affords me pleasure; which is profit…
We have already established that you don’t plan on selling these volumes, thus relinquishing their exchange value (how much money the object might fetch if sold). Thus, all we have left is “use value”—a thing’s utility.4 In the case of your books, their use-value consists of reading and absorbing knowledge. The margins, in particular, are useful for—you guessed it—marginalia.
By not reselling the volumes, you have forfeited their exchange value. If you don’t make use of the volumes by enjoying them in the way you desire, then you are also forfeiting their use value. So I say: use them!
If you decide to write in Poe’s volumes, please let us know and send a picture!
I’d love to hear what other people think, even though I suspect some of you will disagree with me! Please, put your thoughts in the comments.
And, if you have questions you’d like me to consider for a future “Noted Lab,” please put them in the comments or email them to me (notedbee@gmail.com) with the subject “Noted AMA.”
P.S. Here at CUNY, we are at the very end of the semester which means I have a stack of papers to grade and a line of students at office hours. I’m taking next week off from the newsletter, but I’ll be back with more note-taking history the following week!
Of course, I’ve cherry-picked the literary theory that backs me up: Reader Response Criticism. It just so happens to be my favorite type of literary theory too.
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author,” Image-Music-Text. Macmillan, 1977.
Adorno, Theodor. “Valéry Proust Museum.” Translated from the German by. Samuel and Shierry Weber. Neville Spearman. London, 1967. Get a PDF here.
This is how Karl Marx defines use-value:
Use-value as an aspect of the commodity coincides with the physical palpable existence of the commodity. Wheat, for example, is a distinct use-value differing from the use-values of cotton, glass, paper, etc. A use-value has value only in use, and is realized only in the process of consumption.
You can read the rest of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy here.
I agree, write in the books! They are yours. To preserve them for a phantom of the future is nonsensical. Close reading is such a pleasure and writing responses to the text as marginalia is a great way to go about it. Write in ink, make your own mark.
I love the thrid point about value! Often times we spend money on things and are too afraid to use it for fear of it losing it's value. As you said, there's value in the joy we find in the item itself 🙂