There are a protective few who see writing in a book as sinful. The very act of taking ink or lead to the page is desecration and vandalism, graffiti splattered across a sacred monument. Handwritten squiggles irritate and even offend. These delights are not all universal.
Perhaps your own views float somewhere between such militancy and complete leniency. Library books should be left alone – ‘This book must be treated with care,’ as school lending lists, glued to inside covers, used to read – and pens quarantined during reading. However, stumbling across gentle pencil etchings scribbled in the margins can raise the spirits like a free toy in breakfast cereals used to. Just as gifts buried deep in Ricicles meant the day started on the crest of a wave, lead markings cropping up early in a book can immediately enamour you to it. To shut them out in a fit of belligerence would be to snuff bonus life from a book.
By its nature, this pleasure springs from a pre-owned title. During an early breeze through its pages, such scribbles jump from the margin as if standing on tiptoes to be seen. They quickly transfix, leaving the printed text a few steps behind them, and may offer insight or conversely drip-feed enigma – perceptive interpretations or apparently random squiggles and words.
Scribbles take us briefly into the lives of unknown readers gone before. The fumes of revision angst and fleeting dedication to a work are trapped within. In a classic American novel, words conveying colours and textures are circled. A poetry anthology is pocked with technical terms which rest against the start of lines declaring ‘simile’ and ‘metaphor’. Bubbly handwriting asserts that, ‘He is saying here not what the line says but that his relationship with his dad is troubled.’ In the pages of a play, prosaic names like Nigel and Barbara are scrawled next to ‘Estragon’ or ‘Juliet’. Such jottings move through the years – the snooty certainties of academia, the aspiring author placing a star by impressive imagery, a lovelorn reader finding their own feelings perfectly encapsulated in one line, the tiny question marks of a grandma thriving through distance learning.
Then, the marks tail off and a book’s main text is finally alone. Perhaps the pencil editor despaired and gave up, or saw nothing else worthy of action or feeling. Each scrawl, doodle and annotation is an amiable prisoner, sleeping in pages for years until released. They are dispatches from another world, adding texture and coupling readers across time. The pencil is a mighty thing.