Here’s something I discovered in the midst of a recent, and failed, paperback purge:

This stunning bit of literary analysis is scribbled on the endpaper of the 1983 edition of The Catcher in the Rye I read as a high school sophomore. Across from these insights, invading the border of a “Special Offer to Buy Bantam Books,” is the equally cogent observation: Holden is a non-conformist.

I can’t recall whether I came to these conclusions myself or cribbed them off the blackboard, but I vividly remember our teacher informing us that among the seized belongings of John Hinckley, President Reagan’s failed assassin, was a battered copy of Salinger’s novel. And that Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, was arrested with the book even closer at hand—tucked in the back pocket of his jeans. Perhaps it reflects the company I keep, but I too have held my trusty “C in the R” close over the years. I can’t speak for my fellow bibliophiles, but I believe my own connection to the book is tied up in the notes jotted alongside the text. They stretch far beyond the endpaper— flyleaf, title page, and inside cover are all graffitied with reactions to Holden Caulfield’s troubled life. Revisited now, the musings seem at once naïve and compelling, the awakening of an actual boy alongside a fictional one.

The formal designation for this kind of writing is marginalia. Though unfamiliar with the term as a child, I was nevertheless an early practitioner. My initial forays were attempts to spell out two important names—mine and my twin brother Brian’s—in books that did not belong to us. Because I suffered an odd and temporary sort of dyslexia limited to the lowercase letters b and d, the possibilities were myriad. When books were scarce, the white canvas of the basement wall was a fine substitute, though it must have been disconcerting for my parents to descend the stairs and find bavib and drian crayoned the length of the cellar. Seems I’ve always been a scribbler of words in empty spaces.

My early passion for placing words inside of books was stifled when I entered school. At Holy Martyrs Catholic Elementary I found myself in a new world with draconian rules about where one could and could not compose. Well-intentioned teachers indoctrinated us into the evils of stray marks and the importance of letters fitting onto dotted lines. We had workbooks, in which we could write, and textbooks, from which we could read. There was little crossover. Scribbling in a textbook was an act punishable by death—or the nearest legal equivalent: copying the contents of the mauled chapter a hundred times onto loose leaf.

Apparently, Holy Martyrs wasn’t the only school grappling with book desecration. Several years ago, the library at Cambridge University in England staged a manuscript exhibit provocatively titled, “Marginalia and Other Crimes.” The earnest librarians dug out worst-case scenarios from their collection, illustrating various atrocities committed against the stacks. They presented the evidence in a series of glass cases, grouped according to violation. In a lightbox labeled Carelessness rested the fascinating sub-categories: Books Chewed by Dogs, Children’s Artistic Additions to the Text, and Books Chewed by Mice. There was no mention of books chewed by either people or sharks.

The librarians reserved their greatest rancor for perpetrators with ink. “Books marked in ink,” the display read, “are beyond economic restoration...we purchase replacement copies, but store the original damaged copy in closed stacks at ‘Class Z’.”

In the linoleum halls of Holy Martyrs there were no “closed stacks” for secreting away damaged originals. There was only the understanding that originals should never be damaged in the first place, and the hovering threat of nights spent copying chapters. In sixth grade we tackled our first novel, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I remember being captivated by Scout Finch—feeling like I knew her and wanted to know her better and had pressing things to say to her. But by this point in my academic career, writing anything, even my name, in the empty spaces of a book seemed a grave exception, a request to be made with trepidation.

I understood the rationale behind the policy. Textbooks were expensive; they had to be passed from one class to the next until they died a natural death. Many sixth graders, given free reign, would blithely illuminate their books with obscenities, romantic attachments and doodled phalluses. The stakes were understandably high. But I sensed that this case was different, that my intentions were justified and pure. So I raised my hand and asked if we could write in these books, these special novels we’d purchased ourselves.

“Of course not,” the teacher replied. “You’ll ruin the pages.”

I was a high school freshman before I wrote in the margins of a book again.

A few years ago, on a redeye flight to Chicago, I noticed a woman across the aisle with an open book and an uncapped highlighter. Although I couldn’t make out the title, I had no difficulty grasping the genre. The label on the spine informing the Barnes & Noble clerk where to shelve the book said Self Improvement/Spirituality. The woman was an “active reader,” vigorously accenting passages that spoke to her. On several pages, nearly all the words were highlighted. Top to bottom, a magenta stripe across every line. I wondered about the usefulness of a highlighter in a situation like that. Could it all be so important? In her sweeping inclusiveness, her vivid yes! to nearly every one of the author’s sentiments, how was she internalizing the self-improvement she was so clearly seeking? I considered recommending she emphasize only the passages she found irrelevant. In the end, she’d go through fewer highlighters.

I would know; I went through scads of them myself. Yellow, pink, blue, green—had them all, used them all. Neon was hot in the ‘80s, and I had a system down for maximum deployment. I studied with three uncapped highlighters at the ready, starring key terms, underlining important sentences, saturation-bombing vital quotes. The result was something akin to Technicolor shouting: Look at me! And me! Pay attention HERE! The pages had vibrancy, but no voice.

When I revisit books from that era now, they inevitably seem garish. The text, in many cases, is completely plowed under. Often the highlighting is so washed-out that little of my original enthusiasm remains. The disappointment is not merely aesthetic; I miss the evidence of an attempt at conversation. Isn’t this where marginalia is at its most useful? In its ability to transform a static, word-filled object into a venue for a discussion? We trust that in the process of thinking into the edges, we somehow add our own voice to the discourse, bringing us closer to the truth.

When I finally jettisoned my multi-colored highlighter program, it was in favor of a simpler, more legible system—a pen. I try to keep one handy, even if I’m only reading for pleasure. I never know when a line will ambush me, forcing me to see the world, or myself, in a different light. It can certainly be tempting to let these moments slip by unrecorded. If reading, at best, is a conversation, I regularly shortchange my end, either making a doomed mental note or resorting to easy check marks and cascading exclamation points—shorthand for things I’d say if I was more deeply engaged. But when I take the time to actually formulate questions, to paraphrase and clarify, when I spill honest ink in the blank spaces, the result is something far more satisfying, an intentional note to the author and an enduring letter to myself.

Maybe each of our lives, in one way or another, is bordered by these perimeter scribblings, edged with attempts to decipher and pin down the voice we bring to the world. When confronted with situations that mystify or astonish us with their complexity, we turn to familiar ideas and images, summon words we know and understand. We place them in whatever space is available, interpreting and rephrasing until we have a clearer grasp of the one text we hold the closest, our own life.

David Conal Devine lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is finishing a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Portland State University. This summer he hopes to give birth to his first novel, Lifting the Water from the Sea. His wife Eileen, who is much better at these sorts of things, will give birth to their first child--a far more miraculous feat, accomplished in about a third of the time.