Do you write in your books? Tonight, our special guest Caitlin Elgin joins us to talk about marginalia — why you might want to write them, and how you might want to write them. In fact, one of use does not write in his books, and maybe we can convince him to start. Or not.
Show Notes and Links
Our Guest
Caitlin Elgin
@cait.elgin on Instagram
Your Hosts
Johnny Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution
Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle
Tim Wasem
@TimWasem
(Download)
Episode transcript
(A huge thanks to Marissa, Mary, and Sarah for the hours of work they put into editing our automated transcript to make this readable!)
Andy: What you're saying, Johnnym is you're not writing it down to remember it later. You're writing it down to remember it now.
Johnny: I'm writing it down to remember it any time. (Erasable theme music plays) Hello and welcome to episode 165 of the Erasable podcast. I'm Johnny, here with Andy and Tim. And tonight you'll notice a familiar voice, long time Erasable friend, Caitlin, joins us from Brooklyn and we're so happy that you're here. Hello? Okay.
Andy: Caitlin. Yay. We're glad you're here. When did you move to Brooklyn?
Caitlin: Ah, like, shoot, has it been almost four years now?
Andy: Oh, wow. Okay. You've been there for a while.
Tim: Since before we knew you or is there--I don't know.
Andy: No, you used to live in Jersey City, right?
Caitlin: No, I used to live in Jersey City. You're right. No, but when I left Jersey City, I went right to Brooklyn.
Johnny: You just like skipped right over Manhattan.
Caitlin: I think. Since 2017 I think?
Andy: Nice.
Caitlin: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah, so tonight we're going to talk about marginalia like people who write in their books and one of us does not write in their books. So this will be a super fun topic. Hopefully.
Caitlin: *whispering* Guess who it is..
Johnny: I’m a savage I write in mine.
Tim: I think it’s Andy.
Johnny: Want to start us off with the Tools of the Trade, Ms. Caitlin?
Caitlin: Sure. Wouldn't it be terrible if you had me on and I was the one who couldn't talk about marginalia?
Johnny: That would have been funny.
Andy: Defend yourself.
Tim: What exactly are you doing here?!
Johnny: We have totally set you up.
Tim: What gives you the nerve to come on?
Andy: Whomst among us?!
Caitlin: On that note, what am I consuming? It's been a while since I've done one of these. I've been bingeing a lot of YouTube lately. And it's mostly been all criminal psychology. I don't know if you'll hear a theme here cause the other thing I've been bingeing is “I'll Be Gone in the Dark” on HBO, which is like the extension of the book that Michelle McNamara wrote about catching about the Golden State killer who they caught using like a lot of her research, which is kind of amazing. Yeah, I've just been delving way too deep into criminal minds.
Andy: A friend of mine, her mother lives like four blocks away from where they caught him in Citrus Heights.
Caitlin: That's so creepy. It's such a, like the whole thing is so creepy. But I found this great YouTube channel where this guy has all this footage from interrogation rooms and he talks about the interrogation techniques that the police are using. And I tell you, I watch a lot of Law and Order SVU and there's just subtleties that happen in real police work that just don't happen on television and they're really fascinating and really interesting. And yeah, it just, there's a lot that goes into interrogation technique that I just didn't even realize. So that's been a fun binge for me.
Tim: What's been your favorite, like little detail of it? Cause I'm super curious, like what's the one little discovery about it that has just kind of like stuck in your brain?
Caitlin: Like the way the subtle way that “good cop bad cop” can work. I think it was a Jody Arias one. They did like this whole long special on her and they show the interrogation where one day they have a female... She starts in the interrogation with one male detective and then, the next day, they started with a female detective. And she's not like outright mean. That's just like, that's the thing that like catches you the most is that they're not outright mean. They're just sort of talking down to you in a way that's trying to get her to like break and that's her bad cop technique is just like putting like the guilt pressure on. And then they bring the other guy in, who was giving her like a hard time the day before. But now she trusts him more because he seems easier on her than the female detective. It's like, it's so subtle.
Tim: So it's not like slamming the fist on the table...
Caitlin: No.
Tim: ...shining the bright light in your face.
Andy: Let me at her!
Caitlin: I wish. Well, I don’t wish.
Tim: Cartoon version. Yeah.
Caitlin: The other thing I find really interesting about it is just like watching the interrogation footage and what people do when they don't know they're being watched. It's and yeah, like Jody Arias is a crazy person. We don't need to go into that. Maybe I should talk about stationary instead. I've been sticking with the classic Maruman Mnemosyne. Do you guys know how to say this word? Right? Is it Mnemosyne?
Andy: I think so. I think how you pronounce it, like it's the Greek God of memory or Greek goddess of memory or something like that.
Caitlin: Right. Right. I've been using this notebook, this same notebook, not exactly this exact same one. I've been using their branded notebook and the A5 size for years and I haven't deviated. It's like my everyday notebook for everything.
Andy: It's such a good notebook.
Caitlin: But I've recently started bullet journaling lightly and I broke into my Field Notes National Parks for that. Yeah. Oh, and we'll get into this in a bit, I guess, but I'm going to talk about pens for a second. I've discovered these really fun felt-tip....they almost look like a felt-tip, like a plastic fountain pen, you know, like the disposable ones and they kind of write like one, but they're like a marker. They're so nice. And they come in a whole bunch of colors. It's called a Pentel Pulaman. They're fun. I highly recommend.
Andy: What is the difference between this and those plastic fountain pens?
Caitlin: It's like, they remind me of like a Micron pen almost. But they're not fountain pens. So I guess it's just that like weird tip, but they write really nice. The like burgundy pink color is my favorite. Yeah. That's what I got going right now
Johnny: How about you, Tim?
Tim: I am. It sounds in the background, it sounds like somebody is playing like an old arcade game.
Johnny: it does.
Caitlin: That would be the sirens in my neighborhood.
Tim: Okay. All right.
Caitlin: A lot of them sound really wacky.
Tim: Okay. Because all I'm hearing is like, boop boop.
Caitlin: Yes. Yep.
Tim: Okay. All right. A few days ago, I got a new book. It's the author's name is William Souder and it's a new biography of John Steinbeck called “Mad at the World” that came out, I think it was last November. It kind of snuck by and I didn't notice it and I've never actually read, as big of a Steinbeck fan as I am, I've never actually read one of his biographies because, this is a bad mindset that I have, but if I'm looking for a biography on somebody, especially a writer and it was written like a really long time ago, I just immediately don't want to read it. And I think that's a bad thing. I need to get over that, but this one popped up and I was like, oh, it's brand new. I'll give it a try. And I got a few days ago and I'm like halfway through it. And it's actually super interesting and I'm really enjoying that. Great title too “Mad at the World.” But I would highly recommend if you're interested in him at all.
I'm also rewatching Ted Lasso because, you know, every once in a while, you just get to that point where you just need some Ted Lasso positivity in your life. And so I've just been rewatching that on my own. And then the saddest thing on my list is I have been watching a lot of Disc Golf tournaments on YouTube.
Caitlin: Ooh… why?
Tim: This is a safe space, right?
Andy: Yeah, nobody’s listening to this.
Caitlin: Yes, yes, no, I just, I'm very curious what watching this is like.
Tim: Yeah. So it is... the feel of watching.. Because I play disc golf and I've been getting back into it over the last like month since I've been playing a lot so I've been trying to just like watch stuff just to see what people who are actually good at this do, because it's just a good excuse to get out and walk through the woods.
But the watching it is actually it's, it's like, let me finish the sentence before you respond. It's like watching golf, but,the tournaments are-- they don't actually show them live. They don't actually show it live. So you only see like every throw. So, I mean, they're throwing like 400 yards. I mean, these like crazy long distances and wrapping them around trees and throwing them under, over these like sort of like overpass obstacles and stuff. So yeah, I've been watching a lot of those and so they, they take like a whole tournament that they film and then they compress it to like 40 minutes and you just see like the highlights. So.
Caitlin: Is it kind of like watching like trick pool?
Tim: There are like trick throw people out there, but this is more like, I mean, these guys are just like throwing the Frisbee like a mile and just like doing all these.... So I guess it can be like trick pool. Like if they have to get around trees,they'll throw these crazy discs that go like 200 feet up in the air and wrap around the tree and then go into the basket. So that's pretty cool. But yeah, so that's just, I'm just being honest. That's what I've been doing. Late late at night, I'll put on some, some disc golf videos on YouTube and I’m not ashamed of it.
Andy: Jane walks in, “ What are you watching?” and you just switch right away to something else. Like, “Nothing!”
Tim: Yeah.
Johnny: Close your laptop.
Tim: Yeah. Nothing porn, nothing! Anything but telling her it's disc golf. Yeah, so that's me. And I have been writing with... actually I found the other day... I was heading out of the house and I picked up like a beyond-Steinbeck stage 602. It was all like chewed up by the sharpener and stuff and it's just kind of stuck with me for a couple of days. So I'm still using that and I am using the like Kraft brown and spiral notebook I talked about a couple episodes ago. No, but the one that was almost my perfect notebook for the moment of what I was looking for but then I realized that all the pages were perforated and it kind of bummed me out.
Caitlin: Did the Kraft ones... does the spiral come done? Like the covers come off?
Tim: Okay. No, it hasn't yet, but I haven't been using it that long though.
Caitlin: That's my one complaint with the black plastic ones is the covers come off sometimes.
Tim: How does it come off if it's plastic? Just from the spiral like separating?
Caitlin: Yeah. Like the spiral has, does that thing where it like separates a little bit. I don't know how to describe it.
Tim: Oh, I guess like where, like, it's almost like a claw, like it grabs through or whatever?
Caitlin: Yes, exactly.
Tim: Yeah. Okay. No, this one is spiral like the kind you like the Lisa Frank spiral, like the ones you get at, like Walmart or whatever, it's just, let's spiral all the way through.
Andy: The Lisa Frank spiral.
Tim: Yep.
Johnny: Less cute, like Husky and penguin cartoons.
Tim: Yes, exactly.
Johnny: Yeah.
Tim: That's me. How about you, Andy?
Andy: Well, if you think disc golf tournaments on YouTube is exciting, just wait until I tell you what book I'm reading right now. It's called “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing” and it's about the history of word processing. It's a book that I've been aware of for a few years. I was at City Lights Bookstore and I saw it there and I took a picture of it and I meant to like, go back and get it but they were out or they didn't have it in stock anymore when that happened so kind of put it on hold for a while. And a friend of mine is moving and she owned this book and she was like, “Can I give you this book? It seems like something you would like.” And I was like, “Oh my God, that's exactly what I want to read.” And it's interesting cause it's about sort of like, I mean, it's about the history of word processing, but specifically seen through the eyes of authors and people who are writing text and literature with it, like, how does it affect your how does it affect the authors process and perception of of the novel, things like that. There's a really good part in there about oh--the book called “The Talisman”--it was a book from the eighties that Stephen King wrote with somebody else, another kind of horror author who I'm drawing a blank on right now, but it wa,s as far as they can tell, the first book that was ever written, like co-written through email and they would transfer--I don't think it was email protocol--but it was like they would transfer using a modem, text files back and forth with each other. And there were all these things, they were using different styles of computer and they weren't super compatible with each other. Like all the quotation marks would not would not translate so they, they would use other symbols besides quotation marks when they would send it back and forth, like things that were compatible with each other. It was fascinating.
Johnny: Interesting.
Andy: Yeah, there's the first ever word processor that was made for a personal computer was called the Electric Pencil and it's really fascinating. If you look up “electric pencil word processing,” you can see all of these really amazing loading screens that are all-- it's like on a green screen computer, right. It's from the seventies and they just start like ASCII art pencils.
Johnny: Oh my God. That's awesome.
Andy: I'll see if I can get a picture maybe for show notes or something, but yeah, just something I learned in reading this. So yeah, it's a really interesting book. I'm only partway through it; it's a little bit dense so it goes kind of slow. Another thing I never really realized is that, you know, there are these word processing apps, like WordPerfect, which was a big thing, and there was one called Letter Perfect, and something else that had ”perfect” in the name. And I didn't realize when you're talking about typing the word “perfect” is used to denote a specific thing. Like, you know, if you have a perfect copy of something, it is all type-set, there's no mistakes, there's no whiteout, right? Like it's ready to go. And so when, when they used to use the word “perfect” in that sense, that's kind of what it meant. It was like a metaphor that was very much geared toward, toward typing. And of course now, like with a word processing app, everything is perfect. Nobody's crossing out anything or, you know, accidentally going off the page or outside of the margins or anything. So it's like one of those metaphors that just don't don't need to exist anymore. So yeah, this whole book is kind of about that relationship and kind of how it changed the way that people think about writing and think about processing words, which is really cool. Yeah. And I am writing in a Write Notepads Kindred Spirit, which is one of my favorite pocket notebooks. And today I've been using--actually right here in front of me--I have both a Musgrave 600 News and a really beat up Blackwing 530, which is that gold one with the black stripe, which I really like.
Johnny: Ooh. It's like charcoal and fire.
Andy: Yeah. They're definitely a lot different. Got the extra firm Blackwing graphite and then the News graphite. Yeah, wWhich is just like, I don't know, like, like yeah, like black crayon.
Tim: Yeah.
Johnny: That's like anti-matter wrapped up in...
Tim: ...like sidewalk chalk.
Andy: Yeah. You can't touch the two tips together or else, you know, the universe will implode.
Caitlin: Don't cross the strings.
Andy: Yeah. Don't cross the strings. Johnny, it is what's up with you?
Johnny: So I recently watched a mini series on BritBox called “Unforgiven” that was really, really good, and also really, really depressing. It's about this lady who gets released from prison after 15 years for murdering two police officers and then goes back to live in the town that she lived in before. Some of it is hard to watch, but it gets very good.
Tim: I thought you were going to be talking about Clint Eastwood. I got excited for a second.
Caitlin: Me too.
Tim: Then you said BritBox. I was like, oh, okay. It’s one of Johnny's British shows. I haven't I'm so behind on those.
Andy: One of Johnny’s British shows.
Johnny: I'm a sucker for a nice, like five, six episode mini series. I was also watching “Quirke,” but I fell asleep during the last one so.
Andy: I tell you, Johnny, you would love “Mare of Easttown.” 6- or 7-episode mini-series.
Johnny: Yeah. That's on my list. And I also watched “Halston” recently, which is a newish mini-series on Netflix about the fashion designer, starring Mr. Ewan McGregor. And we were talking about this before we recorded. There's a scene with a very stylishly dressed Ewan McGregor having a walk with Kelly Bishop who famously played my serious crush, Emily Gilmore. And it's just a very beautiful scene. It's worth watching the series just for that.
Andy: So Johnny, I've always been a little confused about this. Is it specifically Emily Gilmore that you have a crush on? Or is it like Kelly Bishop?
Johnny: Well, it was Emily Gilmore, but now it is both of them.
Caitlin: She used to be a ballerina so we can just add all these layers to how amazing Kelly Bishop is.
Andy: Yeah. It's true.
Johnny: “Halston” sounds like they had me editing in their cuss words so seeing Kelly Bishop repeatedly dropping F-bombs was really funny and satisfying. Yeah.
Tim: Got to figure out how to like, take the audio of “Halston” and drop it over a Gilmore girls episode or something like that.
Johnny: Oh my.
Tim: Yeah, like a deep fake.
Johnny: That would be awesome. But it was a really, really good series and, of course, lots of pencil porn, it being about fashion design. So that was cool. And, Bill Pullman, who seems to be having a sort of Bill Murray-esque-but-not-funny Renaissance in his career was in it. And he was like a corporate bigwig. And it's the first time I seen him in a while not bearded so that was interesting. And I'm embarrassed to say I'm still reading that giant Thoreau biography because it's slow-going. But I've read a couple of Thoreau biographies and none of them go into a lot of detail about his note-taking process. And with this being a quote unquote intellectual biography, they talk a lot about Thoreau's reading and how he was sort of like a chain reader. Like he'd find one book and then just go down a rabbit hole of all the books that inspired that and that he had extract books of stuff about native America stuff about Carlisle. It was just really, really interesting. I always just thought of him as having a bunch of journals and instead it was like...
Andy: What’s an extract book?
Johnny: I mean, it's not a commonplace book because it's themed so I guess it's like quotations from books he got out of the library at Harvard or borrowed from Emerson, but they all survived evidently, which was super cool.
I think they're sort of spread out between the Morgan library and Concord, but yeah, if you really want to dive deep down some kind of really nerdy hole, it is good reading. I enjoy it. And it has enormous margins for jotting stuff, which we talk about later. And I'm rocking a Musgrave single barrel in a Rhodia goalbook.
I bought one of these a couple of months ago for a bullet journal and I hated it and I don't know what changed, but I bought another one and it's like a completely different book. The lines aren't too dark, the paper feels amazing. And I got Sapphire blue. It's so pretty, but...
Andy: Is it the regular Rhodia paper?
Johnny: Yeah, but it's cream-colored and it's like, you know how some one-in-five Leuchtturm books you get will have some kind of rough paper going on? My last one was like that so writing in this has actually made some of my pens squeak because it's like smooth on smooth. It's really just weird, but in a good way. Yeah. So do you want to jump into some Fresh Points before we go doodling in the margins?
Andy: Sure.
Johnny: I want to hear about the store. It's killing me.
Caitlin: I've been dying to like rant and rave about it cause when I discovered it, I didn't immediately have somebody to just start squealing at, so I started squealing at the poor ladies who work there. So let me just start off by saying it's my two dream stores sharing one space. On one side, they have this beautiful, very minimalist plant store called the Moss & Green. And it's this woman who has all these gorgeous little plants that she specializes in Kokedama, which is kind of like bonsai, but it's smaller and a little bit more compact. It's like these little balls of Moss with a plant growing out of it. They're so pretty. But right next to it is a Hightide/Penco store called Cornershop and they are carrying all of the best Japanese stationary stuff you could ever want in this, like teeny, teeny, tiny, smaller than the original CW mind you, like tiny space tucked away in Williamsburg. I'm not kidding. I almost cried.
Like, cause the Penco - my favorite thing from Penco has always been their little plastic boxes. I don't know what it is about them, they're just like simple, I don't know. They have cute little like labels that come with them, they look a little bit retro and they have every single size of that. They have these great - it's not like wax canvas, but they're - it's like that plastic tarp roll cases, that are incredible - and they carry those in every size. So you can have them for your pens and pencils, but also for your like gardening tools. So many notebooks, so many pens. My favorite pen I actually picked up there though was their free business pen - and I wish I had gotten more than one. I'll have to go back and try to get you guys one of these, because it's like, it's just like a Bic crystal, but it's this like really nice off white and it's made by Pilot. So it's like a plastic, like the plastic pilot version of a Bic crystal and it's got their logo on it.
Andy: would you say that like Penco is to Japan nostalgia as Field Notes is to American nostalgia?
Caitlin: I'd say, hmm. I mean, I'd say similar vibes for sure. Cause field notes, I guess, is trying to bring back the feel of like actual field notebooks. Whereas Penco is kind of doing this like really minimalist kind of classic looking almost industrial in some way kind of thing.
Andy: Maybe it's better to say like Draplin - like DDC is like, classic
Caitlin: yeah. Yeah. I think you could say it's a little bit similar.
But they have like all the little, like gadgetry too. Like they have these click manual labelers, you know - like the P-touch Brother labeler, but the kind that's manual - and you click the letters.
Johnny: I still have one of those. I love it.
Caitlin: Yeah. There's - it's just so much fun stuff.
Andy: Did I tell you I met the, met the high tide CU
Caitlin: oh really?
Andy: Bruce Eamon, who is a guy in the bay area who I'm friends with and is pretty well connected to Japanese stationary stuff. I just ran into them at the Renegade craft fair in San Francisco the year before, like probably 2019
Caitlin: oh, wow.
Andy: Bruce was there with him and just like, ”oh, Hey, Andy meet so-and-so”. Yeah, it was - I didn't realize until later who It was
Caitlin: Oh, wow. I love that.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. There was a really good high tide pop-up in a shop in San Francisco a few years ago. We don't have a storefront yet, but I I think there's a few around here that carry high tide and Penco stuff, so I love it.
Caitlin: this store actually just did a pop-up that's closed now with an LA brand - and I wish I could remember what it was - I'll have to share it with you later, but it was just like even more Japanese stationary wonderfulness. It's like how many pencil cases is too many cases. Cause I kind of want them all
Johnny: Well, if they all have pencils on them.
Tim: how many pencils do you have?
Caitlin: Well, you know, I could start just separating them into all like little cases, just clutter everywhere. That's it. That's what I got.
Johnny: How about you, Tim?
Tim: Oh I only have one. I don't have much to report, but I am, I did a little bit of writing for Johnny's upcoming pencil revolution zine that's coming out. And that was a lot of fun. And it's just kind of a weird conversion of Steinbeck because that's going to be, you know, the subject matter of what Johnny's working on.
And it was a lot of fun to write and I happened to kind of work on it at the same weekend I got that book, so I was all revved up. And that was a lot of fun. I tried to kind of get in the mindset for writing this piece and so I wrote it like him - I used the biggest notebook I can find - which actually this is relevant to the marginalia stuff. But I used my Leuchtturm master - Was it called the master book? That gigantic thing you use and I used my original 602 - that’s the only one I have sharpened. So, that was just a very fun, very fun time.
And what I wanted to say about the marginalia is that one of the things that I've learned and I can't remember if we've talked about it before. Is it Steinbeck was so like - I don't know if it was stingy or like, he just like always, he just had like a scarcity mindset, like he was always just acting as if he had nothing, which - I mean, I know can benefit in some way, but like he would write sometimes like two lines per space, like per row on a page. He was writing so small and he would even write like sideways in the margins, like, so he would just keep composing in the margins, so by the time he was done, these big ledger books that he would write with would just be like a solid sheet of, of graphite, which is
Johnny: that's cool
Tim: kind of insane. And there was, I didn't write about, I didn't write about this for the thing, but one of my like favorite stories, I came across this weekend, which you probably saw a few years ago, but one of the videos that Blackwing put out when they did the 24 is they told a story about how his handwriting was so small and like indecipherable that when the person who was his publisher who typed up all his manuscripts and like edited them died - like finally died, like later in his career - they actually had to contact him and say, “no one here can read what you're writing”. Like, we can't read your writing, so you need to get a typewriter and type this up. And he was like, pissed
Andy: Can you imagine what Steinbeck would have done with a word processor?
Tim: Oh yeah haha, he was pissed. And so he went out and bought an IBM Selectric and it was just like super loud. And he was all pissed about it cause he was a bad typist, so he had like, he typed with like five fingers or whatever. And then as revenge apparently he went out and bought Selectric font balls in Russian and like all these weird languages. And then he would send them typed up manuscripts, just using the English keyboard, but putting like the Russian ball in, he would send it to him and be like, “can you read it now?”
Johnny: Oh, that's awesome.
Tim: Yeah there's a video. Blackwing has a video from their interviews with Thomas Steinbeck and he tells that story and I just thought that was really hilarious. Yeah, that's all I've got.
Johnny: Yeah and I'm not saying this to promote my zine, but Tim's piece is really, really effing. Good. So tune in.
Tim: Well, thank you Johnny.
Andy: You can promote -
Johnny: He put in a lot of work.
Andy: That’s what this whole thing is for.
Tim: Andy, how about you?
Andy: Well, I'm a little embarrassed to say that the only fresh points I have here are about fountain pens, not pencils, which is like, I don't know. I feel like you should put me in a penalty box or something.
Tim: there’s like a fountain pen creep happening on this podcast
Andy: Yeah,
Johnny: Yep.
Andy: We try to keep it away from us in that other podcast. But
Johnny: I blame -
Andy: Who do you blame? Who do you blame Johnny?
Johnny: I was going to say I blame Tim, but it's not Tim's fault.
Andy: Yeah you should -
Johnny: I think it might be my fault. .
Tim: Definitely.
Andy: One of the things I wanted to mention is I made a nice, big, healthy order on the Well-Appointed Desk shop the other day, that's Ana Reinert’s online store attached to a blog
I bought a little thing that lets me clean rubber stamps, and I also bought a really cool little rubber stamp of one of her cats.
I think it's Lucy of totality looking up at you from inside a box, which is really great. But also, the main reason I shot there was I really wanted a Col-O-Ring. Which is that thing she sells that are basically like blank, Japanese flashcards, like little 2 inch by 4 inch pieces of paper on like a ring.
And she sells them to use for ink swatch samples. Because I think I mentioned that last time, but Johnny sent me a bunch of different green colors and I was having trouble sort of remembering the slight differences between them. So now I have a little place to hold a fountain pen ink swatches. And how many are in here? Like I think there's a hundred sheets in here. So that means I can get a hundred different shades of green.
Johnny: That is a good title.
Andy: Yeah. A hundred shades of green, new slash fic fountain pen slash fic by Andy Wefle
You know, we had that - at one point me and Michael Hagan from Leadfast were going to start a green pen blog. And the best we could come up with as - for a title - was ”Green with pen-vy”, but I think, I think “A hundred shades of green” might be better
Tim: great.
Andy: :”Green with pen-vy.” It was pretty bad. And we never got around to it because like, who needs yet another blog. But, that was the idea. Got one of those, and I can't wait to use it. I've been looking at some of the colo-ring users on Instagram to kind of see how they document it. Also, I-in preparation for loading up a bunch of fountain pens with these various green inks- I pulled out an old fountain pen that I got—it’s not that old, currently made—, but it's an old Kaweco AL sport that I actually won from a pen addict giveaway that he did.
Johnny: Oh neat.
Andy: : I, I love the form factor and the size of it, but I have since discovered that I hate the nib. It's a medium nib, so it's a medium Kaweco nib, and compared to the medium fine and the fine nibs that I have, it feels like I'm writing with like —I don't know— like a dull marker. It's just
Tim: yeah, like a less sharp marker
Johnny: I like those kinds of nibs.
Tim: I had one of those too. I had an AL sport with a medium nib and I hated it. Like, I just hated it. I use the fine, and I like the broad, even-that was kind of cool, but the medium was just- it was a mess, and mine was skipping a lot.
It's like they made 50 million of them. and they just have to work through their stock or something.
Andy: So I might just order a fine nib for this and replace it, but.
Johnny: I have a fine in mine and it's like really fine,
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: A lot finer than I'm used to, but it's smooth.
Andy: Yeah. I think, my Parker and my Pilots are the two pens I think I like the best. I'm still figuring this out. Yeah. That's it for my fresh points.
Johnny: So real quick, because this isn't written down, I just got a shipping notification that my Parker 51 Deluxe is on the way. Yay!
Andy: Oh, you ordered the deluxe.
Johnny: I didn't order it. It was a present.
Andy: Okay.
Johnny: I mean, I was going to order it, but someone beat me to it. So, the plum was on ultra back order because if you see it you'll know why it's so pretty.
But so my little Henry has started bullet journaling every morning, which is really cool. I think we've—I don't know if we've talked about this in the show before— but he seems to have inherited some of my brain quirks, and he doesn't focus very well. So, he started keeping his bullet journal, and he just does a little, a few bullets and a little gratitude section.
And then I'll give him like two or three writing prompts, like what's up this weekend. And he uses his little fountain pens, whichever one he wants to use. And after seven days he got a wax seal or a brass seal for wax. And anyway, his birthday was last week. So he had to do some thank you cards.
And the kids exchange letters with their grandmother at least once a week. So he sat down and wrote five thank you letters, a very elaborate picture for a card, and then wrote in his bullet journal. And I swear it's because he bullet journals every morning. So I'm taking full credit for this. It's like a big turnaround.
It's really cool. He's not a very confident artist, and he's left-handed and, they haven't been in school this year, so his handwriting could use some work.
Andy: Is he the only lefty in your house?
Johnny: Yeah, I think I only know three people who are left-handed: my Henry, you, and my friend, Paul, who plays guitar right-handed, which is interesting.
Andy: Ana Reinert is also left-handed.
Johnny: Oh awesome. We should have a left-handers club. My only other thing is that the Tuesday zine, which is not written by me is two months old.
As of when this comes out, the number eight is out, which includes an homage to Bellatrix Lestrange. And I also put out a larger one, that's got all of them together, which is cheaper to buy and easier for me to make, called two months of Tuesday— very creative. So it'd be fun to count how many times the F word is in there? That guy who writes that has some kind of dirty mouth.
Tim: Search/find how many…
Johnny: I'm going to blow up Google docs. Yeah. So you want me to move on to our main topic?
So, I had assigned myself the task of digging up some information about famous margin writers. But the only one I could think of is Hemingway cause I didn't do it. Sorry,
Tim: okay.
Johnny: He was famous for writing all over his books. I would love to check out some of his comments. You guys have any famous or notable marginalia folks?
Andy: I know that Sylvia Plath did. And I I don't know much more than that. I should see if I can. I remember reading something about it. I should look it up. There was a 2012 New Yorker article called “The Marginal Obsession with Marginalia.” —Oh, it looks like Edgar Allen Poe did.
Johnny: What?!
Andy: Edgar Allen Poe wrote in 1844, “I have always been solicitous of an ample margin. This is not so much through any love of the thing in itself however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling in suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion or brief critical comments in general.”
Johnny: Oh, that's awesome.
Tim: Johnny, you can get that tattooed on your back.
Andy: Yeah, I think you can. It’d look real good on your lower back.
Johnny: I’m gonna need more room than my lower back. That’s gonna wrap around my torso and have to gain another COVID-19 to fit it.
Andy: I guess if it's marginalia they should write it kind of in-between your other tattoos, right? Just sort of like,
Tim: Oh yeah. That's good. Just like wind it all the way
Caitlin: as like filler
Johnny: Make it like completely illegible little coffee stains
Andy: Just have a sleeve that's just marginalia.
Johnny: I am dying for another tattoo.
Caitlin: I can't remember where I saw this exhibit. I want to say it was at the Cloisters. But marginalia used to be big, in olden times—that sounds really dumb, Caitlin—in biblical manuscripts. So like illuminated manuscripts were there like monks were writing everything down by hand.
They would basically doodle in the margins except for, it was a lot more elaborate than doodling. So yeah, I'm literally Wikipedia this as I'm speaking, just to make sure I'm not completely making this up. It just was kind of a thing. And it kind of made the copies even more unique because they wouldn't draw the same pictures throughout all the copies they made.
Andy: yeah.
Caitlin: It's just sort of their weird personal touch
Andy: Yeah. David Foster Wallace.
Caitlin: So Andy, people have been doing this for centuries. Yes.
Andy: it's true.
Tim: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David Foster Wallace was the one that I was going to mention. I remember hearing about his a while back cause he would, I remember that I had found out about it because there was something about how he had written in the margins of his books a lot, but also in books that you wouldn't expect him to be like marking up.
Like I see a picture here of Silence of the Lambs is one, but Stephen King novels and stuff that he read just kind of for enjoyment—he would still fill those things up and write all over in his kind of crazy handwriting. I love there's this picture of his, he drew on the face of Cormac McCarthy. I don't know if that counts as marginalia, cause it's right on top of his face, but enjoyable.
Johnny: So, when we were talking about this, Andy confessed that he doesn't write in his books. So Andy is going to ask us questions about why we do this.
Andy: yeah. And also, and also sort of talk about that too, which I'm happy to do.
Johnny: Yeah. I definitely want to hear about that. So you want to take it away.
Andy: yeah. So I guess my first question is why—why do you mark up your books in the first place and what do you get out of it? I'll ask some kind of process questions after this, but just, open forum, broadly, why do you do it? What do you get out of it?
Anybody want to start.
Johnny: Can I jump in first because I'm the oldest?
Tim: Go for it.
Andy: Sure.
Johnny: So, for me mainly it's memory issues. I need to refer back to stuff, and a lot of it carries over from graduate school where I can't find that passage and I'm like, crap. So then the next time you read a book, you really write all over it. So..
Andy: What you're saying Johnny is you're not writing it down to remember it later, you're writing it down to remember it now.
Johnny: I'm writing it down to remember it any time.
Tim: Yeah, I was, I was actually going to quote that for my reason. Like, I don't actually look back at my annotations very often, but it's just my thinking in the moment, it's processing things as I read is why I do it— a lot of the time marking things down or underlining things that I find interesting. And I'll copy stuff out that I really want to keep, but I don't often look back at the notes.
Andy: Yeah, Katelyn, do you do marginalia?
Caitlin: I tend to do it mostly with poetry, just lines that I really like, and I'll go back to them and revisit them. It goes hand in hand with, you know, dog-earing some of my books. In other words, I'm not particularly gentle on my literature. But that's also one of the things I sort of find satisfying about it. The first time I wrote in a book, it was kind of like, This is my book and I can do what I want. So there's like some sort of satisfaction I get out of defacing a book a little bit. But yeah, I agree with what Johnny and Tim were saying like sometimes I'll just write stuff in the margins to sort of process it or ask myself a question about it and I'll come back to it eventually, maybe not ever, but it's there. Iit's sometimes kind of like a fun surprise cause you forget what you're writing books, sometimes.
Tim: I mean, I love when you look back at a book that you've read before and you find something that you've written in the margins and it just makes you cringe where you're like, oh my gosh— like you thought you were so smart when you wrote that, you thought you were so cool when you noticed that, “oh, this is like the Christ figure of the book” or whatever, like in college, or you're constantly looking…
Andy: You’re reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Tim: Yeah you're constantly looking for the same three things that pop out at you or whatever. I had a professor when I was a freshman. I had never written in the margins of my books really until I got to college. And I had a professor in Humanities who his name was Danny Helsenbeck. He was like 112 years old, but he's teaching the class, but I remember him like holding up a copy of The Odyssey by Homer like on the - in case you mix it up with another Odyssey, I thought I'd throw in Homer there - but he held it up and he's like, “This is not a trophy. This is not something that you have to keep in pristine condition.” He's like, “Get yourself a highlighter and write all over it. Cover it.” And he like flipped through his book and showed us a and there was just like tons of notes going up and down the sides, you know? Like he just plastered it with all the notes from teaching it over the years. And that was the first moment where I was like, “Oh, I have permission. You can do that? I didn't know you can do that.” Because at that point I think I would have like a notebook that I would write things in as I was reading. And I was like, oh, I could just take out the middleman and just write it straight in the book. But thank you, Dr. Helsenbeck.
Johnny: Okay.
Andy: Well I’m trying to think about why you know, ever since we started talking about this topic, why I don't, and I, this is just completely like psychosomatic analysis of myself but like, I think like, so, in grade school, we did a lot of like - we would turn in our books at the end of the year and then like the next, you know, next year, the next students would use them until it just got like really, really gross. So we were always sort of discouraged in grade school from writing in our books, just so they would last a while. I went to a sometimes slightly underfunded Catholic school that like, you know, you pay tuition tuition to go to it, but is still somehow underfunded. I'm sure Johnnie remembers that.
Johnny: Oh, my God.
Andy: So I would, you know, we would do that thing where we would wrap up our books in brown paper just to kind of keep the covers nice. And I would doodle all over that. I would doodle on the brown paper cover, but I would not do it inside the book. And I have zero idea if that has any bearing on why I don't. I also, I got a lot of library books when I was a kid. Like, I mean, I had a lot of books, but also I got a lot of books in the library and I just didn't want to, you know, you don't, you don't do marginalia in library books.
Caitlin: Books are sacred.
Andy: Yeah. So, I have zero idea, but it just like, it makes me uncomfortable to, even if it's a book that I own, like because, you're right, it's not a trophy, right? Like, it's, this is yours. If you give it to someone you can like, you know, they can, you know,take a glimpse into your wisdom or whatever. But I just, it makes me really uncomfortable to try to like think of things to write in it. And what's weird about that is when I read Kindle books, I highlight passages all the time. Like I don't usually take notes in them, but you know, in Kindle you can just like tap on some text and drag and highlight a passage, do that all the time. So it's fine for eBooks and just not paper books.
Johnny: So when you were in school, if you had to do a paper that was like, you know, a really close exegesis of a text, you wouldn't like touch it with a writing instrument at all?
Tim: So you were an English major, right?
Andy: Yeah. And I usually did that in a notebook, like on the side. I would, you know, I mean, there is a difference, I think, in my head between like highlighting passages of the book with a highlighter or an underlining or whatever and writing marginalia like, I have definitely highlighted into books a lot more. But most of the time I've just kept a notebook, like a side notebook to remember like, oh, page 43 second paragraph or whatever to keep track of that stuff. I remember, I can't remember what I was reading, like probably a Victorian novel where like there's a bajillion characters and all of their names are similar. Sir John or something. And I remember at one point keeping track in the front of the book like on the, yeah, one of the header pages, like just a list of characters and their like relations to each other. And I just remember feeling real weird about that. Like, Hey, I'm just writing in the front, but at the same time, like, you know, I was going to sell my book back to the bookstore after I was done with it and you know, maybe somebody else could benefit from that. So I completely see what you're saying about like how it's interesting to go back. Even if you're cringing, you can kind of go back and see what you were thinking at the time. Or if, you know, you're passing this book along, it's useful to somebody else, but it's just like one of those things that I just it's hard to get over. I think part of it is that it's kind of uncomfortable for me to like actually write in margins. I don't think that's just a left-handed thing. Cause if a right-hander was trying to write in like the right margin, I imagine it would be like the same sort of uncomfortableness. Yes.
Johnny: Yeah, it is weird.
Caitlin: it's interesting that you brought up the book covers. cause I, the schools I went to were the same way. We were really underfunded. And so we had all these different hacks for like covering them in newspaper and then covering the newspaper with like contact paper. So it was like really protected and yeah, you would get in big trouble if you ever, ever wrote in those.
But like, what's funny is like, you're talking about this and it popped into my head, the dictionary at that school and the dictionaries were all defaced and written in, but with like fake definitions and there's one that like - I can still picture this in my head - written in the margin of the F page to this day. Fart, the desperate cry of a lonely turd.
Andy: Amazing.
Caitlin: have remembered this since I was in like the second grade.
Andy: Pre-Urban dictionary.
Caitlin: Pre-Urban dictionary. One of those big, like green covered Merriam Webster's.
Andy: Yeah. That's so good.
Caitlin: That kind of marginalia is special.
Andy: Yeah.
Caitlin: Okay.
Andy: You don't forget that. That's awesome. So I would love to know, maybe from some of you more prolific marginalia writers a little bit about your process, or maybe you can walk me through like a book that you write in, like, do you do this to all books? Do you just do it to nonfiction or just a fiction, or like, do you, how polished is the idea that you write in there? Like how much are you sort of self-censoring or editing before you put it down? Or is it just whatever?
Tim: Oh, I'm definitely just like whatever. I put down all kinds of stuff, but I do have, like, I guess there are like a few categories that end up happening if I think about like - one thing I've gotten into the habit of doing over the last decade or so is always marking words that I like. Like if there's a word that I don't know that I want to remember, I'll usually, you know, circle it or underline it and then I'll write the definition in the margin. So that's something that I do.
Andy: See, what's nice about a Kindle is you can just tap on it and it pulls up the definition that sometimes when I'm reading a paper book, I get frustrated that I can't do that.
Tim: I literally, and I show my students, like in class, I'll be like, what's that word mean? And they're like, oh, I don't know. Can you guess? No. How about you ask Siri? Because your phone is three inches away from your face and they're like, so we'll be reading and the kid will be like, Hey Siri, what does affable mean? Or whatever, you know, they'll write it down. So I do that. And then of course there's like the thinking and processing stuff. But one thing I like to do is the, and especially in fiction or in an essay, like the last page of it, there's usually like the gap in the page. Like the last half page that's empty or whatever. I'll put some, I'll write like final thoughts about what's going on in that chapter, what I thought about it, especially with nonfiction or essays. I only do that in fiction, really, if it's like, if I have like a task, like when we were doing the membership podcast, if I was thinking of things that I wanted to talk about or whatever, then that's a place where I would put it at the end of the sort of like the last extra half page, the end of a chapter.
Andy: That’s why you're an English teacher. That's amazing.
Caitlin: Yeah. Far less intentional or even detailed than that. Mostly when I'm writing in my books, I do a lot of underlining and I prefer to underline than highlight for some reason. And it's mostly in fiction or like poetry and it'slike an appreciation of a sentence I really like; I just liked the way that it was crafted. I don't often write in books, I guess. I just don't often write in books with like a purpose. It's just more appreciation, I guess.
Andy: You just have your pencil in hand? Yeah. You just have your pencil in hand when you're reading and, you know, just kind of extend it as part of reading. I mean, it is a more like active reading process, right?
Caitlin: Yeah. It's like a little bit of like, appreciation of the literature, you know, just like, oh, that's okay, that was so good.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah, I would...
Andy: What kind of stuff do you usually write?
Johnny: I did a lot of like themes when I was working on my dissertation and I had to use a lot of Nietzsche’s texts. Like all of my Nietzsche books have marked off every time he mentions hate or despising and enemies and stuff like that, like in the entire effin book, because the indexes are useless. So it was a lot of stuff like that and...
Andy: You could turn that into a Tuesday zine.
Johnny: Oh my God. Yeah. Well, yeah, my dissertation was on hate. So I had practice. I should make that a zine. It'd be more funny. But yeah, there was definitely a purpose to that. But now when I do it, a lot of it's just to remember things like Tim said say a word that I want to explore a little more later or you know, anytime in a book about Thoreau, they mention his pencil manufacturing, I tend to mark that off and put a page in the back, listing all the pages where that's listed. Or Jhumpa Lahiri has so much good food writing that a lot of times I'll have a list like running in the back of the book about, oh, lapsang souchong tea and latte bowls and stuff like that. But a lot of mine, the process is just sort of like grouping things together so that I can refer back to it later, if that makes any sense.
Andy: And, do you like, do you refer back to it like right after you finished the book or years later or something else?
Johnny: Both like, for all my Nietzsche books I used for undergrad and my MA and my PhD so there’s like layers and layers of marginalia in there. So looking back at them is actually tricky because I can't read my own writing from 20 years ago. Yeah, a lot of times, you know, for the scene or something like that, I want to look up a passage from Hemingway and I know I have it marked off and I sort of have like, my memory sucks, but it's visual so I can picture like what side it's on and if it's at the bottom and I can find it more easily that way.
Tim: That's the same. Same for me.
Andy: Interesting. Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah. And they're, oh, I'm, I'm haunted by I swear that in The Varieties of Religious Experience, that William James referred to the writings of Nietzsche as like the screechings of a dying rat, and this was in like 2002., I still can't find this damn citation. And it would have been perfect for my dissertation. I couldn't find it. The internet was no help. I like scoured my book that I wrote all over. No help. So ever since then, I'm very paranoid and I write down anything that’s that awesome. Cause that was pretty awesome.
Caitlin: I would have underlined that for sure.
Andy: So let's say you walk into a bookstore and you find on the shelf, a book that you really want to read. It’s a used bookstore and you open it and you're looking through it and there's just like, it's full of marginalia written by somebody else. Would that encourage you or discourage you from buying that?
Tim: It'd be a hard pass for me.
Caitlin: Whooo.
Andy: Yeah. Was it like, you know, like the author and a book that they wrote or was it like, you know, a famous person or is it just like some Joe Schmoe? Yeah. Yeah. Generally though, generally they'll pass. Right, right Tim?
Tim: Yeah. If I'm going to a used bookstore and there's stuff written in the margins, I avoid it. If at all possible. I've bought books you used before that had like a handful of things written in them and I've like, had to go get another one.
Andy: Unless it was a really, unless it was a really thoughtful definition of fart.
Tim: Yep. That would have, that would have kept me, kept me engaged. But...
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: And I do have the - this actually reminds me have you, do you guys know about the book S. or Ship of Theseus is like another name of it? I haven't read this yet, but it was an idea that was conceived by JJ Abrams and it came out in 2013 and it was a novel that this guy, Doug Dorst. Like he wrote a novel called Ship of Theseus by like this fictional author but then the actual story happens in the marginalia.
Andy: Oh, interesting.
Tim: So the book is printed with like stuff written in the margins.
Caitlin: Interesting.
Tim: Does that make sense? And so I have a friend who I need to borrow it - cause she's recommended it to Jane and I like several times, but it's out of print so it's a little expensive to get now, but she like was just in love with this book and I need to check it out. Cause it's like,a whole bunch of loose stuff is like tucked into the pages and stuff's written in the margins and like a lot of the story takes place on the extra stuff that's like...
Andy: Oh, cool. Yeah.
Tim: So that one, I would buy it because it's on purpose, but...
Johnny: Have you read House of Leaves by Danielewski? It's sort of like layers and layers of text and footnotes and marginalia. I don’t know why I didn't think of it before tonight.
Andy: I read it. I read in college, but yeah.
Johnny: That book was creepy. Oh my God. Loved it.
Andy: Would you buy a book with somebody else's marginalia?
Caitlin: I think it would depend just a little bit, but I would, because I kind of find it a little bit charming. It would depend because of course it wouldn't, I don't think I would go and buy something that was like, annotated, like super scholarly. But if it were just like somebody enjoying a piece of literature and kind of commenting on it throughout the way, I kinda find that nice. Like, if you buy a used book and you find the old library card still inside? Yeah. I like that.
Andy: Did I ever tell you that - so I bought this, I think my mom bought it for me - it was just one of those old books from like the 40s, 50s, 60s that are that are kind of like gold foil and Boston, like fabric, just that really fantastic texture that was purchased at a used bookstore. And it recently had belonged to our local public library and a coworker of mine who was quite a bit older than me checked it out in 1962. And she was like eight years old and I later sent it to her. I was like, “Hey, you read this book when you were eight.” Cause her name was still written on that library card. It was so cool.
Caitlin: That's so special.
Andy: Yeah. Sorry, side conversation there.
Johnny: No, it's cool!
Caitlin: Yeah, I like that.
Andy: Yeah. Would you, Johnny, would you buy a book written by somebody else or written in the margins with somebody else? Depends?
Johnny: Maybe? I have before, if it was like a really rare book and I couldn't find another copy of it, but generally, no. But I do like to buy books that have the dedication written in them.
Caitlin: Oh, yeah, that's fun.
Tim: oh
Johnny: I feel like you can pick up on the vibe, like when someone's
Tim: It's also kind of sad when they're like, I think you'll love this book and it's like, I'm buying it at a used bookstore.
Johnny: Yeah, like a year later.
Tim: Clearly they hated it.
Johnny: Yeah. So I read about this and thought about you right away.
Andy: Great. Thanks. so, of course this is a podcast about tools and do you use a pencil or a pen or highlighter or something fine-tipped or broad-tipped? What do you use to write in the margins? Johnny? How about you?
Johnny: Always pencil. Because, in part, you know, sometimes I misspell something and it just looks terrible. And I have gone through books before and been like, oh, why did I highlight that that's not important and now it's really distracting. And also if I ever wrote in them, I usually would use a ballpoint pen and it destroys the paper. Like, you know, if you pick up something 15 years later, you're like, oh, that's why you're not supposed to use a Bic.
Andy: Do you think something pretty firm or pretty soft?
Johnny: Yeah. So this is super nerdly and I can talk to you guys about it. I have like a small fleet of pencils that I like to use for marginalia and I test them in the back of a book before I use them because so many books have such differently textured paper, like, the one I'm reading right now, a Velvet number two is perfect because it's got a nice tooth to it.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: It actually, it gives me a nice, yeah. It's like some pleasurable, it won't smear and I can still see it.
Andy: That's a really good idea. Caitlin. How about you?
Caitlin: I'm a little bit more about what's on hand...
Andy: Yeah.
Caitlin: ...when I'm writing in books, but I generally go for pencil, especially in like paperbacks, that sort of like really textured paper? Pencils are so good for that.
Andy: Yeah. Bet it feels really good. Tim, do you have a go-to?
Tim: Not really. I mean, I'm a big highlighter person. I underline stuff sometimes, usually pencil, but it really bothers me if I can't write a straight line, like underlining things, or if like I squiggle over the words, like it just drives me nuts and so it has to be a pencil so that I can fix that. But I usually it's highlighter within the book unless I'm circling like the word or whatever and then I usually write in the margins with the pencil and I'm not too picky, I guess. I mean, just kind of the same stuff I always use. I suppose, just nothing too soft cause usually book paper. It just seems to be a little toothier.
Andy: It seems to me that a bridge pencil would be really good for that cause you can kind of like tuck, tuck it away in the book when you're done with it pretty easily. Like if it's a paperback. Yeah.
Tim: And also disappear in my hand while I'm writing with it.
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: Like where did it go?
Johnny: Tim, do you ever use those highlighter pencils?
Tim: I've tried, but I just didn't like them. Yeah, I have a couple of them. I just didn't care for it. Some were given to me and then I had, I think some of those Yoobi ones from Target.
Caitlin: Yeah, Yoobi ones are bad.
Tim: Yeah. Those were bad, but I don't really care for it. I like a good bright green highlighter
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: Or orange. I like orange
Andy: Yellow, blue...
Tim: Or yellow. There's also blue,
Andy: Red, black. Love a black highlighter.
Tim: Black.
Johnny: Oh, and those, Mildliners are a thing now, and this was so...
Caitlin: Suddenly the podcast is about censorship.
Tim: Blackout poems.
Andy: I like to black it out so nobody else can read it once I've read it.
Tim: This is mine!
Andy: Yeah. This is my knowledge now.
Tim: It’d be amazing if somebody did that, like to everything, like an entire book, like , instead of a bookmark, they just like Sharpie out every line after they read it, like...
Andy: It’s like Snapchat, but for reading a book, like you can only read it once and then we're just going to black it out.
Tim: Oh my gosh, I finished this one. And then you put it up on the shelf and like, can I borrow that? Oh, you don't want to borrow that? Why does it, does it suck? Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah, it has no story at all.
Andy: Yeah. Last question for me, and then if anybody else has anything they want to share or ask, I’d love to know it. If you are, you know, talking to somebody about, as you are now, who are hesitant to become a margin writer, what would you say to convince them? What's your value proposition here? Caitlin. How about you?
Caitlin: I'm immediately going to go with the crime angle. that's it. Do it. Do it, Andy. That's all I got for you. Do it because it's yours. It's your book. You can do whatever you want to it.
Andy: I'm probably going to have to ding this out, but you know, you can write in the book, you know, cause **** the police.
Caitlin: Exactly.
Tim: There you go. It's almost like I kind of equate it to like putting your own personality stamp onto a book in some ways, which not like episodic, why I do it, but afterwards that's how it feels, you know? It’s like it's like you pick out a new baseball glove, you know, like this is the perfect glove for me. You get all broken in and you play with it for three years. And then afterwards you're like, oh, that's got a lot of character to it. I wasn't playing baseball in order to give it character. I wasn't like wearing these boots every day to give them character as if I had ever worn cowboy boots. But like, you know what I mean? So I think it's just kind of a cool way to let you in the book kind of blend together a little bit, blur the lines or whatever. I just think which...
Caitlin: It makes it so much more personal. Yeah.
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: After the fact, I mean, it really is pleasant to look back over a book, especially when you really enjoyed it and look back and kind of re-experience your firs first reading of it in some ways or second reading.
Like when I'm working on that thing for Johnny’s zine, I got my original copy of Grapes of Wrath out that I read in college. And I was like looking through the margins and I saw all the little - which we didn't mention these, but those plastic colorful tabs - like I saw all those and it was just flipping through looking at it and I was just like, transported back to that afternoon I blew through the second half of the book when I was poaching my neighbor's couch or my suite-mate’s couch because it was more comfortable and read through that book and I could just flip through it now and just sort of relive it. And that was, that was pretty cool.
Andy: I do love a plastic tab.
Tim: Yes I do too. So that's what I don't know. I guess that would be my answer. It's a way to kind of put your stamp or it's like a time capsule, I guess, is what I'm saying. Like a time capsule of your personality and how you interacted with that book down the road.
Andy: Oh yeah. I like that. That's really cool. Johnny, what do you think?
Johnny: I'm that guy that gets people when I'm into for presence and tends to be kind of pushy and proselytizing, but I don’t...
Andy: What, all these fountain pens I have in my desk? I don't know what you mean, Johnny.
Tim: All these green inks showing up at your...
Johnny: Yeah. I wouldn't try to do it because, I mean, if somebody is a reader and they don't write in their books, like whatever they're doing is working, unless it's like, you know, a specific advice for, “Hey, if you don't want to mess up grad school, like you better really read closely and this helps.” But even then, whatever is working for somebody, I don't want to mess with it. Now I sound like a jerk.
Caitlin: Those are some really different takes.
Andy: Yeah, absolutely.
Caitlin: Don't do it. Do it because it's special and ****.
Tim: I don't care. Johnny's like, I don't care if you do it or not just.
Johnny: Yeah, you do you, man. If you write in my book, I will break your effin arm. That happened in college. I lent someone a book and they wrote all over it cause they thought they were smart and then I threatened him. It was bad. Edit that out.
Tim: I say...
Caitlin: Yeah, that's kind of criminal. If you loan a book to somebody and they write in it. Uh uh.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: I think it's criminal that I didn't follow up on my threat.
Tim: I, as a teacher, I literally spend the first week of school teaching my students how to do this. I'm not going to go into all the detail, but I like, I have a pretty hardcore week-long system of teaching them how to like, read closely and write in the margins that I do every year that I've been doing for like five years.
So it's not what we're talking about, the enjoyable stuff. This is like, when you're reading, you know, reading with a purpose, like for school or something, but by the end of the year, I've always got all my kids trained. They look for...they’re underlining and writing about the main idea, they're asking questions, they're highlighting vocabulary, they're making connections to history, other texts in their own life and then sharing their own opinions and ideas. It's like those five things. They're always like trying to do all five of those things on every page that they read and they’re writing it in the margins. And I literally like grade their margins after they read something to see how closely they read, that's like the best way for me to tell.
Andy: Tim's not going into it, but if you pay $89.95 on MasterClass, you too can learn from Tim how to write in the margins.
Tim: Yes. Yeah.
Tim: Three small payments of $39.99, I'll send you the VHS.
Andy: You get a free trial.
Johnny: Is there anything on it?
Andy: Yeah.
Tim: Yeah.
Johnny: Do not be alarmed.
Tim: It's a pirated copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something. Whatever.
Caitlin: Oh, I would be so happy.
Andy: Hell. Yeah.
Tim: Yeah, I think.,
Andy: Alright. Any closing thoughts? Anybody want to talk about something I did not mention here?
Johnny: I want to mention... I have one random question. What do you guys use for sharpening? Like, do you like long point, short point for this kind of thing? Cause like this matters like it really does.
Andy: Because people are listening to this. Of course it matters. Yeah.
Caitlin: Of course. Long point. Pollux probably. Ooh, I got some grunts from that.
Andy: You did.
Tim: Johnny.
Caitlin: I will tell you, what's the word I want, I don't have as much access to great pencil sharpeners as I used to.
Andy: It seems like you would want to like a short point, so you can like really choke up on the pencil cause you're not going to be able to like, you're going to have to rest your hand pretty carefully in order to write in those margins.
Caitlin: I think the long point helps me write smaller and like more precisely, especially for underlining, like, yeah, like one of the firm Blackwings is like perfect for it.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: I’m totally the opposite. I like...
Caitlin: Or shoot me, a mechanical pencil.
Tim: Wow.
Caitlin: The right width for underlining.
Johnny: But you know, some mechanical pencils are cool. I mean, if you had like a vintage celluloid Shaeffer that weighed six pounds with gold trim, that'd be neat. Is that what you’re using?
Tim: I don't think so.
Andy: One of those lead holders that that Tim got at the...
Johnny: Ooh.
Tim: Yeah.That would be a nightmare. No, thank you. No, not that one. Yeah. I'll take a mechanical pencil once in a while, but not that one. I did not like that thing. I like looking at it. I just don't like using it.
Johnny: Lately, I have one of those Kum anniversary, like the little glass jar sharpener that I use for twiddling’ on because the pencil I was using was too short to fit into my electric sharpener, cause it has a clip on it. So instead of taking the clip off, I just grabbed the different sharpener and I grew to kind of like it.
Andy: Yeah. Cool.
Caitlin: You know, I, I just, this is like a slight, slight, slight tangent, but it is about sharpeners. I discovered recently that one of my bosses has the like ideal electric sharpener, the Panasonic the big like Manila-colored ones, the fux wood front.
Andy: Yeah,
Johnny: We were talking about this.
Caitlin: Yeah.
Tim: We were texting about this last night, like about that sharpener? Yeah,
Caitlin: Which like, you'd know what you're about. But she brought this sharpener. They just had their headshots done, the owners of the company I work for. And she brought the sharpener as her prop for the headshot.
Tim: That's awesome.
Caitlin: One of us.
Tim: That is a good move. I like that.
Andy: Yeah. Right before Tim texted to say that he's running a bit behind, it's a message from Johnny that reads, I wonder if I can buy some kind of woodgrain adhesive on a sheet that I could cut to fit over the front of his Exacto sharpener.
Tim: That's all right.
Andy: Just talking about that Panasonic.
Johnny: I mean, it's not a sexy machine.
Andy: Yeah. That's amazing. Cool. So that's main topic. That's a wrap up for me. I'll toss it back over to Johnny.
Johnny: Okay. So, thank you for joining us, Caitlin. Can you tell folks where to find you on the internets?
Caitlin: Thank you for having me. Really only one place these days, which is just Instagram. It's Cait.Elgin. Follow me for lots of plans.
Johnny: How about you guys, regular folks?
Tim: Well, you can find me on Twitter @TimWasem and I'm on Instagram @TimothyWasem.
Andy: I’m on Twitter and Instagram @awelfle and on the other, one the web at andy.wtf. How about you, Johnny?
Johnny: I’m at pencilrevolution.com and on social media @pencilution (Twitter and Instagram). And you can find Erasable on social media at Erasable Podcast. You can find our Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/erasable. And our page is facebook.com/erasablepodcast. You can find us on the internet via a web browser If you're feeling really old school at, I keep forgetting that we have a website.
Caitlin: ...a word processor.
Andy: Yeah.
Johnny: You type it E R it's erasable.us and this episode will be at erasable.us/165. You can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/erasable, and these very fine folks support us at the producer level, which is $10 a month. I'm going to take a big breath and I don't have any water here.
Andy: Do it all in one breath.
Johnny: If I pass out, I'm going to tag one of you into a...
Thanks to David Johnson. Phil Munson, Nate Raybeck, Donny Pearce, Bill Black, Miriam Burkout, Harry Marks, Alison Zepeda, Diane Oakley, Tom Keekley, Andre Torres. Kyle, Paul Morehead, Andrew Squish, Ali Serra, Jemelia, Stephen Fensali, Erin Willard, O.A. Pryor, KP, Millie Blackwell, Chris L., Hunter McCain, Bob Ostwald, Michael Delosa, Adam Probola, Jacuqline Meyers, Tana Felice, Inside Joe Crace, Measure Twice, Michael Hay. Chris Metskis, Bill Clough, Random Thinks, Jason Dill, Dave MacDonald, Mary Collis, Alex Jonathan Brown, Andre Prevost, Kathleen Rogers, Bobby Letsinger, Fourth Letter, Kelton Weins, Scott Hayes, Hans Nudleman, Terry Beth, Jay Newton, Stuart Lennon, Dave Tubman, Chris Jones, and John Wood.
Andy: Wooooo!
Johnny: Many, many thanks. And we'll see you guys in two weeks.