Prompted by reference 1, and encouraged by remarks about how the index to my edition of Pepys is probably the best example of an index in the English language, I thought I would buy reference 2. Puzzled by Amazon who could only offer delivery in a fortnight or so, I went to Waterstones, who appeared to have it in stock and I was able to pick it up from bricks & mortar the next day. Maybe Amazon were going to get me the US edition from over the pond.
250 pages of so of text, arranged in eight chapters, starting with the ancient Greeks and Romans, passing by way of the invention of alphabetical order and of page numbers – and ending with computers doing away with much of the drudgery of compiling indexes. The great piles of indexing slips once generated by indexers have vanished!
Fairly light-weight and chatty in tone, which sometimes jars a bit – as, for example, when we are told what a warming pan is. Plenty of little book and book-trade anecdotes, some more relevant than others. But it is good that we still have house room for people who want to spend some large chunk of their working life grubbing around in grand old libraries peering at ancient books and manuscripts!
We learn something about tables of contents and concordances and more about indexes, compilation of which (for the present at least) still requires professional indexers who actually read the book being indexed – for which see reference 3. Indexes as a vehicle to bash the author of the book being indexed – there being a lot of this in the 18th century. Indexes as a possibly freestanding form of literary conceit. Then moving beyond mere books, indexes of everything, or at least of large chunks of knowledge. Crossover with alphabet books, bibliographies, catalogues, dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
Much ink has been spilt over the years about people who do not read a book from cover to cover, the whole point in the olden days, but rather dip in and out. Perhaps scavenging bits and bobs from here, there and everywhere to assemble into their own confection. Or sermon – which last was once an important activity. Bad habits which are encouraged by the provision of tables of contents and indexes. Still worse, people who peek at the table of contents, look themselves up in the index and then do not bother with the book itself at all – before going on to write a review of same.
And I dare say much ink has been spilt in university departments about the extent to which novelists include overt explanatory or didactic material inside their novels, in the way of Samuel Richardson. Perhaps some of it is to be found at reference 4, part of the table of contents for which is included above. While Richardson and Clarissa are to be found, for example, at reference 5. From where I associate to all the rather tedious semi-philosophical chatter in ‘War and Peace’, chatter which ‘Anna Karenina’ is all the better for omitting.
Odds and ends
Page numbers were not invented for printed books, but they certainly took off with their arrival. There was one problem in that different editions of the same book were likely to have different page numbers – but a bigger problem now is that electronic versions of books often do not have page numbers at all and the text just flows through the reading device in question. What is one to do instead? Kindle locations are a bit clumsy. Twitter hashtags?
Chapter 6 includes a short digression on books like ‘The adventures of a bank note’ or ‘The adventures of a quire of paper’ which flourished in the mid 18th century and which often contained a good dollop of coarse humour. Perhaps concerning the end-game for much of the printed word: wrapping paper for wet fish or what? From where I associate to my elder brother being tasked with homework essays of the same sort, one that I remember being called ‘A day in the life of a school gate’.
It also tells us of the coming of books which bound up runs of periodicals, perhaps the ‘Spectator’ of reference 6. Books which were not intended to be read from cover to cover and which really needed the support of both tables of contents and indexes if one was to do more than just dip.
There was a foray into the indexing of fiction, not much done nowadays. So the now-rare third edition of Clarissa got an elaborate index (title page left), prepared by the author himself, who went on to produce a free-standing index (title page and a sample page right) for his three big novels (references 7 and 8). Indexes which were more about the morals to be drawn from these novels, rather than indexes in their more neutral, modern form. I failed to find a copy of reference 7, either for sale or online, but I did turn up an online copy of reference 8.
More monsters of the indexers’ art were the successive indices to the monstrous collection called the Patrologia, that is to say the collected works of the church fathers. See reference 9.
From all of which we gradually settled down to the routine indexing of most works of non-fiction; indexing which was usually done by professional indexers. And which was an expensive business: it remains to be seen whether publishers will settle for the second rate productions of computers – or whether deep learning really will start to do the work of trained human indexers. With the present book helpfully offering both a computer generated index and a real one.
Other matters
The book uses the words ‘map’ and ‘territory’ a lot, which suggests to me that the author read the book (reference 10) noticed, amongst other places, at references 11 and 12. For me, my first exposure to the rather curious oeuvre of Houellebecq. But in this context, a connection which carries no weight, as, as far as I can remember, the two books do not overlap at all.
I might say that it took some messing about to get to reference 12. The answer turned out to be to get a blog query (box top left) which returned just the post in question, then right click to ‘view page source’. Perusal of which turned up the relevant file name. An example of the merit of having more than one way to get at a problem, rather as tables of contents and indexes provide two. With some books having a name index and a place index as well as the regular index. With my edition of Pepys going one further with a (fat, alphabetical) companion volume. But where does one stop?
The author perhaps came from the same book-regarding family that I did, with books being important, things to be treated with care and respect. With the result that he, like I, has more regard for a tatty, second hand book than a new magazine or periodical which might well have cost a lot more. The former is for keeps, the latter is ephemeral. Although at least one person that I know, who also reads a lot of books, discards quite a few of them after first and only reading.
He (the author) also did time as the Munby Fellow at the library of the University of Cambridge. With Munby quite possibly being the father of one of my contemporaries at school. A father and son who were both a bit leftie.
And to close on a suitably pedantic note, I read on the very same afternoon that I bought this book, that some publishing houses enforce the rule that you only use personal pronouns for humans – or for animals with a previously identified sex. Publishing houses which are vague when it comes to cows, pedantically female, but in practise domesticated bovines of any sex. But what about my use above of ‘who’ for Amazon – my source not covering this particular eventuality?
Conclusion
An entertaining and instructive read, although I did skim a bit in places.
A bit disappointed that there was nothing much at all about the serious business of building an index for a large book, say something like Kandel’s Neural Science of reference 13.
References
Reference 1: Life Is Short. Indexes Are Necessary: In his new history of the index, Dennis Duncan traces its evolution through the constantly changing character of reading itself - Fara Dabhoiwala, NYRB - 2023.
Reference 2: Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age – Dennis Duncan – 2023.
Reference 3: https://www.indexers.org.uk/.
Reference 4: The "Power...to Alter and Amend": Textual Production and Editorial Actions in Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa" - Steven Robert Price - 1998. PhD thesis. Available at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/217404141.pdf. The source of half the Richardson snap.
Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/clarissa-concluded.html.
Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectator_(1711).
Reference 7: A collection of such of the moral and instructive sentiments, cautions, aphorisms, reflections and observations contained, in the History of Clarissa, as are presumed to be of general use and services, digested under proper heads – Samuel Richardson – 1751. Included with the third edition. Failed to find a copy.
Reference 8: A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments, maxims, cautions, and reflections, contained, in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, digested under proper heads, with references to the volume, and page, both in octavo and twelves, in the respective histories – Samuel Richardson – 1755. Available at https://ia601608.us.archive.org/0/items/acollectionmora00richgoog/acollectionmora00richgoog.pdf. The source of half the Richardson snap.
Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrologia_Latina.
Reference 10: La Carte et le territoire - Michel Houellebecq – 2010.
Reference 11: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/01/lidentite-judiciaire.html.
Reference 12: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/12/joyeux-noel.html.
Reference 13: Principles of Neural Science - Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. Jessell – 2000.
No comments:
Post a Comment