May 20, 2005
On Footnotes
Crooked Timber has a brief post with an interesting discussion right now about footnotes and their variations. Specifically, they're asking what the most interesting ones people have read are. Personally, I'm sick of them, but that's just because I've been editing other people's notes for over a month now; they're always a mess, as I mentioned earlier. My favorite is when an essay using footnotes (not endnotes) has pages where over half the page consists of notes. You might see three lines of the essay and 30 of notes. It's always interesting to find that sort of thing. Why don't they just put that information in the essay itself? I don't mind reading digressions.
David Foster Wallace has an intentionally annoying story called "The Depressed Person" in which the footnotes are so long that you're turning pages reading them, and then when you finish and go back to the "main" text you read one or two more sentences before being directed back to another footnote. It's maddening.
So, then, aren't the footnotes the bulk of the actual work? That is, should you still read the story as a story?
I think that's kindof the point.
Although really the point is that this depressed woman who is the protaganist as such is the most pathetic self-absorbed, annoying, person you could ever possibly meet, and the excessive footnotes just serve to further illustrate the circular, tangental, depths of her pathetic, egocentric, conversation patterns.
Sounds like fun! Ever read _Notes from Underground_ by Dostoyevsky? I imagine that book was impressive when it first came out, but I just found the protagonist annoying and whiny. There were, of course, good parts, but nothing like his longer works. Anyway, mention of a self-centered depressive reminded me of that character.
No. I'm pretty ignorant in the Russian lit department. I started "Brothers Karamzov" a couple of times back in college, but couldn't get through it. I should give some of that stuff another try, I'm a much better reader now (and my subway commute affords the perfect time).
Good book, but I liked _Crime and Punishment_ better. Maybe if I read _Brothers K_ again I might get a bit more out of it—it's been a few years. I enjoyed it the first time around, but it's just so big and has so many characters (well, not that many, but more than a single protagonist) that it's hard to really keep everything in mind at once.
Btw, I've been catching up on your blog tonight. Man, I've been sleeping. Excellent stuff. Yours is the kind of blog I wish I could write.