A Commonplace Book

Even those students who do not keep track of quotations in private journals are on the lookout for good sayings. Dorm-room doors boast white boards with "quote of the day" sections; common rooms have forums for people to write the favorite things they've heard or read; student papers often begin with quotations. Such public quoting is different from the interiority of private scribbling. It says something about you, not to you. It makes a statement, and (as we all remember from our college years) making a statement, too, is an important part of this phase of development. See how intellectual I am? See how cynical and worldly the inhabitants of this Nietzsche-quoting dorm are? I'm unique! I've got a bizarro sense of humor! These public quotes are bumper stickers for people who don't spend a lot of time in cars.

While I find the urge to collect the words and wisdom of others an understandable way to mark one's developing self -- and not a bad way to spend time -- I do have some nagging questions about all this quoting . I wonder if transcription isn't sometimes standing in for thinking, as in the days of copy books. Or if bite-sized bytes of pithiness are all we can attend to. I wonder about what this means about how college students are reading. Are they just seeking nuggets of truth, without paying heed to the context in which they're mining? And what about attribution -- do they know anything about the writers, thinkers, artists, or activists whom they are quoting? Do they make a distinction between characters in novels and authors? When they see a quote that they really like, does it impel them to find out more about the writer, to read more and more deeply, or do they let the quote stand alone?

My friends who are professors tell me that students often try to have quotations do the interpretative work for them, that they let replication replace analysis, that the collective attention span of today's college generation has shortened even more than that of the MTV-watchers of my generation. The Internet has made it not only possible, but easy, to search for nubbins of information. You can always go deeper (I guess that's the idea behind hypertext), but my sense is that many people don't; there are too many competing demands on time. We've become a society of skimmers.

When it came time to put away childish things, the role of the copy book was assumed by its close cousin, the "commonplace book." The process of maturation required the production of more-personal collections of writings, meant to provide inspiration, direction, and moral fortitude. Reading the commonplace books of historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or any number of antebellum Southern ladies gives us an interior view of each person's self-image and the words that motivated him or her.