In Praise of Graffiti (well, some of it)

I never understood the purpose of carving one’s initials on poor innocent trees. Perhaps I saw Fern Gully at a young enough age that I always sympathized more with the trees than with the lovers who immortalized their infatuation in a living plaque. Nor do I have a very great appreciation for the work of so-called “graffiti artists” whose garish and cartoony murals cover half the walls and subway stations in the major cities of the western world. (Maybe the eastern world too; I never thought to look when I was in
Seoul.)

But I have to confess a fascination with graffiti in classrooms and libraries—even (forgive me, fellow bibliophiles) graffiti in library books. Most of it’s juvenile stuff, of course—people’s names and initials and, on college campuses, fraternity symbols. But every once in awhile you get something really clever, and then you feel rewarded for spending your valuable study time reading all the other fluff. In a classroom in the English Department, I once saw a note on a desk that read, “Who is John Gault?” which is, of course, the famous first line of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Even better, in another classroom I once found a medieval palindrome:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

(It doesn’t mean very much, but it reads the same forward and backwards and up and down, and in addition it can be rearranged to read “PATERNOSTER” (the medieval name of the Lord’s prayer) in a cross shape, with two A’s and two O’s leftover (for Alpha and Omega, of course). The fact that some student knew the palindrome and took all the time necessary to carve its letters indelibly into the desktop impressed me, and I felt a sudden kinship with this unknown mind from an unknown time.

Probably my interest in graffiti is very much tied into my dissertation project, which studies medieval marginalia (I swear, more interesting than it sounds!). I’m fascinated by the way in which medieval, and even post-medieval, readers of manuscripts immortalized their names and comments and complaints on the leaves of the books themselves. Not only that, but later readers read and commented on THOSE comments, carrying on a conversation across who knows how much time and who knows how much distance, with people they likely never met, and who were likely dead by the time they read their notes. It is a form of very, very slow but immortal community, and I think it’s wonderful.

That’s why I spend as much time when I’m in the library carrels reading what’s written on the walls and shelves as I do reading what’s in my books. I’ve seen actual conversations (“Hi.” “Hi yourself.”), vigorous disagreements (“What are we here for?” “To learn to live to our potential.” “No, to get a degree and get a job.”), and even some kind if not particularly effective encouragement (“Orgo is eating my life.” “Don’t worry, Jesus loves you!”).

Here are some fun ones I found recently, all in one carrel:

“My spoon is too big”—a reference to a very, very strange series of parodic animated shorts by Don Hertzfeldt.












“It’s hotter than a toasted cheese in here,” which someone else glossed as “grilled cheese” and snarkily added, "FTFY"—"fixed that for you."














“Kill ‘em all,” which someone crossed out, then another person wrote, “Let God sort ‘em out,” to which someone else responded, “And I’m God’s intermediary,” to which, of course, yet another hand added the very clever riposte, “FU.” Disturbing enough but very dynamic.











But this is my favorite:


The symbol of the Deathly Hallows, which coincidentally started appearing chalked on walls all over campus shortly after the seventh Harry Potter film came out. Every time it rains, someone chalks them up anew.










College students have far too many ways to procrastinate.


I’ve often thought the experience of reading a medieval manuscript is very much like trying to study in a subway station, with all the voices in the margins calling for your attention and distracting you from what you might otherwise focus on. More recently, I’ve decided it’s much more like reading in a library carrel, where despite the silence, the walls themselves speak and speak loudly. But perhaps it would be more accurate to reverse the comparison say that studying in a library carrel is more like reading a medieval manuscript: they came up with it first, after all. We’ve just taken things off the page and stuck them on every other surface we could find.

So long live library graffiti—but please don’t take this as an encouragement to become vandals yourselves. I don’t even write in my own books, much less the library’s books. But when the crime’s already been committed, I see no reason to pretend it isn’t fascinating stuff.

PS: While we’re at it, sometimes the officials commit faux pas themselves. Remember the misspelled book binding I mentioned a few months ago? Well here’s an elevator button from a library that just tickles me pink:

If I hit it, do the doors open or close??