Literature is brilliant, and so I collect it, as cheaply as it can be provided. Anybody with English-language, used, classical paperbacks to sell, for less than five bucks a pop, can tap into my pocket pretty much any time I pass by.

I like to buy classics, read them, and then abandon them. Wherever that may best be done. The editions I like the best? Former high school texts.

The marginalia scrawled by a high-school girl just trying to pass a class, while thinking of nothing but boys, greatly enhances the effect of the literary works which form the backbone of our shared culture. You don't really understand Brave New World until you've read a careful definition of "soma" scrawled in a margin, by a girl who knows those words will be on the test, but who is clearly averse to thinking them through.

This time around, it was Macbeth. I'd ducked into a shop literally to get out of the rain, and come out with some Meat Puppets and some lightly used Shakespeare. I didn't notice the annotations until after I began reading it, honest. Sometimes this just happens.

Of course, that play's not only Shakespearean, but Scottish, so a certain amount of definitional scribbling can be expected from any diligent student; most of the marking was dull. However, there was one editorial note that gilded the whole experience.

It had been some time since I'd read of the mad Scot, and I'd forgotten that his wife was introduced to us as she read a letter from him. The letter spoke of his victories and the kingly prophecies of the witchy women, and her reaction was a Shakespearean, Scottish version of "oh hells yeah, he's a wuss if he doesn't go for that, I'd stab people for that."

The student's only note in the entire scene was underlining part of the letter where the noble warrior was addressing the woman, whom he did not yet know as the treasonous advocate of his doom. She had underlined the part where he referred to this viper as his "dearest partner of greatness", and in the margin she wrote:

aww...

Wow. You have to admire the mental tenacity required to think of Macbeth as a love story. Whoever she is, I hope somebody got her a boyfriend and a set of steak knives for Christmas that year. She'll do well.

I snickered about that as I read the play through, thinking of how different this tale must look to a lady half my age or so. All the amusing perceptual mismatch between a lady dreaming of the love of a successful man, and a man who is dealing with having been dreamt. It does me good to tell that kind of story sometimes, though it seems I never get to the end.

When I'd finished the book, I wondered where to leave it. I immediately thought of the place where I'd felt "ABANDON ALL HOPE" should be scrawled; in those circles, there was, or once was, an appreciation for this kind of delicacy. I took pains to leave it there as a treat, or as close to the place as I could.