To many people, of course, the idea of marking up a book seems distasteful – a violation of the text, a sign of disrespect for the author’s authority. The structuralist literary theorist Roland Barthes divided readers into two categories: those who produced marginalia, and those who left the book as they found it, instead writing their glosses elsewhere. Barthes himself belonged to the second category. He copied out extracts from his reading on what looks (in the reproductions I’ve seen) like small pieces of graph paper.
No doubt Barthes developed a whole theory around the contrast -– though the distinction need not be so airtight as it might sound. Consistency in such matters is not necessary. Over time, my own attitudes and routines have certainly changed, growing ever more nuanced but also more specific to the kind of text open in front of me.
more from insidehighered.com (via TPM) here.