Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books by H.J. Jackson (review)

humanities 159 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 ing on the machinations of the IOC as a corporate entity, the authors never fully challenge the aggressive marketing and advertising that has ensued. The addition of a political economy/globalization perspective could effectively situate much of this book within the global trends of the past twenty years. Secondly, while it may be true that as the new IOC president, Jacque Rogge, states, >The Olympics are primarily put on for television,= the authors sidestep serious consideration of the ramifications for sport development : increasing corporate dependency has shaped the very definition of sport and inclusion in the Olympic program. Athletic events are even scheduled to suit the needs of television rather than the athletes. Furthermore , the fact that athletes seek corporate dollars to cover the costs of training and competing has meant levels of risk-taking that have not abated at a time when the IOC has seen its profits dramatically increase. Finally, a more thoughtful engagement with the unchallenged assumption that business and corporate excellence is equated with sporting excellence is necessary. Without question, the Olympic message has spread globally with the advent of enormous TV rights and advertising dollars. However, by concluding that the future success of the IOC=s marketing initiatives includes guaranteeing exclusivity for its primary sponsors, the authors highlight the tenuous links that already exist between sponsors= products and the Olympic ideals. Who or what organization will take a much-needed watchdog role that oversees the extent to which Olympic sponsors draw on and develop the very values that provide them their profits? >Creative= marketers rather than Olympic scholars have dangerously become the main interpreters of Olympic values B key points in the broadcast of the Olympic ceremonies have already succumbed to misinterpretations of the Olympic symbols and values. (CORA MCCLOY) H.J. Jackson. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books Yale University Press. 324. us $27.95 This beautifully produced and printed book charts the history, inspiration, and meaning of marginalia, the writing by readers in their own books or other people=s. There are a number of paradoxes here. The first arises from the value attributed to such writing, especially when it is commentary by one distinguished person or another, which thereby creates an interesting and important association copy, and yet contradicts the modern view, formed by fastidious collectors, who think that annotation ruins books forever and want them in mint condition. Public libraries embody the contradiction, for they forbid marginalia by their readers and yet collect them. The view that writing mutilates a book sees marginalia as an appropriation of a work by its annotator, who thereby parasitically acquires 160 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 an audience for himself, intervening between the text and future readers and even, in Virginia Woolf=s (to my mind, rather crazed) opinion, perpetrating a kind of sexual assault upon them. A further paradox explored by the author is that although apparently spontaneous and impulsive, as when the reader records a correction or impassioned agreement or irritation arising from his own experience, marginalia are not as innocent or transparent as they sometimes seem, being the product of tradition and convention or a means of selfaggrandisement , or as in the case of gift copies of books mostly older than 1820, being a means to further friendship and love. The author is herself a labourer in the great Coleridge industry, and it was Coleridge who both coined the term >marginalia= and was their most unflagging practitioner, finding them an invaluable aid to his own composition, and thereby dominating the golden age of this activity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The author is at her happiest in her remarks on Coleridge, as in comparing his marginalia to >someone running upstairs taking two steps at a time.= It is the writers of his period who justify the author=s claims for the importance of her subject, and it is among them that marginalia that can claim to be >competent= or >transcendent,= to use her terms, are ordinarily to be found. There is also much fascinating information here about...