Mortimer J. Adler's "how to Mark a Book" Forging Unforgettable Friendships

Rachael Light

Mrs. Weaver

English 101, College Writing

11 September 2017

Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Mark a Book:

Forging Unforgettable Friendships

           In this digital age where being technologically chic as well as savvy increasingly plays into the social norms, people are more often choosing to utilize electronic devices to read and type temporarily transmuted thoughts on backlit screens instead of the “old fashioned” words pressed into physical paper. In education, electronic interactive media is gaining popularity as not only a teaching tool in the form of supplementary curriculum, but in some cases fully replacing physical textbooks. Mortimer J. Adler’s detailed instruction of how one should write alongside the author as a means of reading more efficiently, might be considered outdated in this technological era due to the inherent difficulty of writing on a digital copy. I believe that Adler’s How to Mark a Book, instead of losing its relevance due to digitization as some might argue, may in fact be of more importance to the electronically versed readers of today.

    As one reads Adler's scintillating essay, the depth of his delight in -and deep respect for- his subject material is overwhelmingly apparent, to the point of being infectious. Authors who long ago returned to the dust which accumulates upon their “outdated” genius, are his dear companions so often conversed with. “A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances,” Adler asserts as he argues his case for taking the time to delve deeply into a great book and thoroughly absorb its knowledge; in contrast to the temporary pertinence of information sourced by a flimsier format (20).

The thoroughness of understanding material in relation to the informational medium was the subject of a study conducted by Kate Garland and her colleagues at the University of Leicester a study in 2003. When comparing information sourced digitally through a computer monitor versus a physical paper booklet, the processing of the data by the test subjects proved drastically different. The participants who read from the spiral-bound text converted the material into the more easily accessible and deeper-rooted knowledge, while those who accessed the same information digitally stored it merely as short-term memory (Jabr 21).