Random
Marginalia: Jesus Blood
Thou Shalt Underline Me
One of the greatest surprises found in a used book is entertaining marginalia, though, often, the last reader’s scribblings are either illegible, inane or distracting. In a library copy of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood I found someone’s psychotic, paranoid underlinings that were inane and distracting, but somehow also entertaining. There’s even an narrative arc to their madness.
Checked out from Columbia’s library…
(Offending reader defiled book approximately 1972)
Underlines each and every mention of the word Jesus for 90% of the book:
In this entire page, she (let’s just make the reader a woman, shall we?) only found one word to be noteworthy: “pleasant.”
And then the notations get even more haphazard:
…but fear not! She stays the course. She sticks with Jesus, even though someone else didn’t…*
*it says “unsaved” in the margin
Oops! She just crossed out Jesus!! How many Hail Mary’s for that?
It’s true! Arabs DON’T have Jesus. But, wait… There’s no Jesus in this part!! How is that even possible?
Finally all this close reading pays off and decodes a mystery near the end of the book…
Where do lightening bolts come from? FROM JESUS. That’s where. O’Connor is thus decoded.
Tags: Jesus, marginalia, wise blood
this is fantastic. i had fun with a copy of The Reivers by Faulkner that had odd underlinings as well.
this is fantastic. i had fun with a copy of The Reivers by Faulkner that had odd underlinings as well.
I wonder if in underlining “eternal death” “she” was drawing attention to the redundancy of such a phrase and also the prevalence of such redundancies in most religious rhetoric on the whole
I wonder if in underlining “eternal death” “she” was drawing attention to the redundancy of such a phrase and also the prevalence of such redundancies in most religious rhetoric on the whole
I don’t know if my last comment was serious or not
I don’t know if my last comment was serious or not
thou shalt be judged by st. peter by the number of times thou hast underlined the lord. great post and photos.
thou shalt be judged by st. peter by the number of times thou hast underlined the lord. great post and photos.
i cringe when i read my old notes in books i read
i cringe when i read my old notes in books i read
Interesting. Great post.
Interesting. Great post.
I once checked out a curiously stained copy of Blood and Guts in the High School that had “The Devil tries every dirty trick in the book…” scrawled on the first page.
I once checked out a curiously stained copy of Blood and Guts in the High School that had “The Devil tries every dirty trick in the book…” scrawled on the first page.
same here. the ones which make me cringe the most are, appropriately enough, in “jesus’ son”. the word “salvation” was used
same here. the ones which make me cringe the most are, appropriately enough, in “jesus’ son”. the word “salvation” was used
P.S. Happy Sunday
P.S. Happy Sunday
This is great, Catherine. Thanks!
This is great, Catherine. Thanks!
i love
T-bone steaks
awe and hate
its a poem. Susan howe made an entire poem out of Herman Melville’s marginalia.
My favorite piece of all time was in a lit-crit book on rhetoric, in a section about stating subjectives as opjective fact, somone had written, bold and very large:
Cheese IS disgusting!!!!
i liked this
i liked this
This was strangely fascinating
This was strangely fascinating
I checked out a copy of “The Devastation of the Indies” (one of the first accounts of ill-treatment of the natives in the new world) and it was covered top-to-bottom in marginalia arguing back and forth over what harm the Spanish really did to Latin America, how the book was/is propaganda, etc. It gets pretty intense.
I still have it. I thought it was “too cool” to return, although much later I wished I had because of the fines. Now I’m waiting for some kind of amnesty day.
I checked out a copy of “The Devastation of the Indies” (one of the first accounts of ill-treatment of the natives in the new world) and it was covered top-to-bottom in marginalia arguing back and forth over what harm the Spanish really did to Latin America, how the book was/is propaganda, etc. It gets pretty intense.
I still have it. I thought it was “too cool” to return, although much later I wished I had because of the fines. Now I’m waiting for some kind of amnesty day.