be careful with that ink, son

i've been spending the last week or so wondering just what kind of person (i.e., high school student, college student, etc) owned my copy of barchester towers before me. what, you may ask, spurred this line of thought? highlighting. i don't know that i've ever seen highlighting done quite in the way that it is done in this book. well, actually, i'm fairly sure there were at least two previous owners, one who wrote in cursive with a dark blue pen, and one who used a blue highlighter. i am really only concerned with the latter, as the cursive-writer only contributed a brief character synopsis on one of the front pages and wrote "read 2/99" on the back of the front cover (as interesting as that may be, the blue highlighter was more prolific and intriguing).

on to blue-highlighter man (i don't have any proof of gender; i have just imagined this person as male for some reason). the first point of note is the obnoxiousness of aforementioned blue highlighter. it is in good shape, as evidenced by the constant leaking through to the opposite page. personally, i seldom use highlighters, and even more seldom do i use them on novels. especially not if they are blue and in good condition (the highlighter, that is). this is primarily for aesthetic reasons, but if i'm going to use a non-yellow highlighter, then it will be on an article that is not double-sided. also obnoxious is the laziness with which this person highlights. the blue stuff careens past the text and into the margins, and the longer passages that get highlighted display an impatience that mimics the drawings of most two-year-olds.

but i'm getting ahead of myself. the good stuff really lies in what he highlights. essentially, highlighter-man only highlights names of characters, and occasionally pertinent information about said characters, although this latter is done mostly in the beginning, when we are being introduced to the characters. not only does he highlight the names of characters when we are first introduced to them, but if in those passages the name of a character appears more than once (as is often the case), he highlights accordingly. highlighter-man apparently only focuses on introductions and important events (he even highlights the name of the chapter titled "love scene"), thus the bulk of highlighting only occurs during the first few chapters and the last few. so, this is where my confusion regarding highlighter-man's personage comes in. it seems to me that the type of highlighting being done is indicative of a rudimentary exposure to novel-reading and/or literary studies. which would then perhaps suggest that highlighter-man was in high school or maybe even in an intro lit class. but this begs the question: who reads, or for that matter who teaches, barchester towers (or any other 500-page victorian novel) in high school or intro lit classes?

so i am left to believe that highlighter-man was either an ambitious literary novice, or a not-so-keen lit major. or, that he was exposed to an ambitious teacher who clearly overestimated her students' ability to think critically about this novel (that is, if we can at some level equate highlighting practices with evidence of critical thinking). at the very least, i am hoping with all my heart that this person was not in graduate school, although this may not be entirely out of the question. i suddenly have the urge to flip through the books of one of my lesser-esteemed classmates (who, thank christ, i do not have class with this semester).