A few greasy looking smearsand next to them, written in soft pencil-by a beautiful girl, I could tell,whom I would never meet-'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'
This feels like the author is alienated by the world that he felt moved by the book's passage. From being lonely and depressed, he can visualize the story.
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,when I found on one page
The author gives us a background of his loneliness growing up and how it felt.
anonymous men catching a ride into the futureon a vessel more lasting than themselves.
These can be random people judging and annotating to make a name for themselves and become famous for generations.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoriajotted along the borders of the Gospels
This is stating how annotations and reviews from works go far back, and perhaps it is part of the writing process.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our ownand reached for a pen if only to show
Although students may not be great at annotation, they were good at taking tests and studying through school.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,Hands cupped around their mouths.
Since he talked about students, this can mean that students don't think for themselves when annotating. They copy other's thoughts.
One scrawls 'Metaphor' next to a stanza of Eliot's.Another notes the presence of 'Irony'
Since he talked about students, this can mean that they don't give great analysis to annotations. Therefore, making sarcastic remarks.
If I could just get my hands on you,Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,they seem to say,I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
This feels like a comparison. Maybe hurt and feels less than because of the comparison to Kierkegaard.
I remember once looking up from my reading,my thumb as a bookmark,trying to imagine what the person must look like
This passage appears like a moment of reflection and defeat, sitting alone and stopping at a certain point.
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,skirmishes against the authorraging along the borders of every pagein tiny black script.
This first statement appears to be anger on words, but it appears as a reflection of sadness. Most people lash out when they are in pain.