One of my personal weaknesses is footnotes and endnotes. No, in this case I'm not referring to my writing, though the case can be made equally on that count. Rather, I'm accustomed to a simple division that relates to readability. Normally, this division works for me, as it's derived from common patterns among the authors I read. But lately a couple of oddities have thrown me for a loop.

To start with a couple examples of what I'm used to. From Hirschman:• The term thus carried into its "commercial" career an overload meaning that denoted politeness, polished manners, and socially useful behavior in general. Even so, the persistent use of the term le doux commerce strikes us as an abberation for an age when the slave trade was at its peak and when trade in general was still a hazardous, adventurous, and often violent business. A century later the term was duly ridiculed by Marx who, in accounting for the primitive accumulation of capital, recounts some of the more violent episodes in the history of European commercial expansion and then exclaims sarcastically: "Das ist der doux comerce!" [aa]

[aa] - Das Kapital, Vol. I, Chapter 24, Section 6. The term became apparently a private joke between Marx and Engels. When the latter finally gave up, in 1869, his connection with the family textile firm in order to devote himself wholly to the socialist movement, he wrote Marx: "Hurrah! Today marks the end of the doux commerce, and I am a free man." Letter of July 1, 1869, in Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1965), Vol. 32, p. 329. (Passions, 62)

The only oddity about Hirschman's footnotes are that I always have wondered what happens if you use alphabetic notes and run past twenty-six. I'd never seen an author bother to cycle through before. But that particular footnote, I promise, lends much to the discussion. It gives the discussion of doux commerce depth and texture. And unlike the bibliographic endnotes, the commentary seems an appropriate part of the discussion to warrant inclusion with the primary text.

And that's pretty much the division I'm used to.

But lately, I've become more and more accustomed to using the endnotes to include textual clarifications, as well, such as this from Pagels:• .... Sacred Essene texts like the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness reveal secrets of angelology, which the sectarians regarded as valuable and necessary information, for recognizing the interrelationship of supernatural forces, both good and evil, is essential for their sense of their own identity--and the way they identify others. [39]

[39] - Yigael Yadin, who edited the War Scroll, commented that this text, like others from Qûmran, "considerably extends our knowledge of Jewish angelology--a subject of utmost importance in the Judaism of that time" (Scroll, 229). But Yadin did not tell us what constitutes its importance: Discernment of spirits, the capacity to recognize and understand the interrelationship of supernatural forces, both good and evil, is essential to the Essenes' sense of their own identity and the way they identify others. Having set aside, not so much as wrong but inadequate, more traditional forms of Jewish identity, the Essenes articulate, through their accounts of the battle between angelic and demonic forces, on which side of the cosmic battle each person and each group of Jews stands. (Origin, 59-60, 193)

But what do you do when the light turns blue ...?°

I'm at a loss regarding whether or not to reproduce the next example. Quite simply, it is a new degree of accommodation that I'm just not accustomed to. I mean ... and some of my fellow posters thought my notes were obnoxious!

What to do when the endnote is five hundred words of information offering background and insight on a particular issue of the text? It seems to break the reading up horribly now that I'm constantly flipping to the back of the book in order to make sure the note is something that can wait for another day.

Admittedly, there's only a few endnotes that fall into the 500-1000 word range, but many run between two- and five-hundred.

Additionally, both Hirschman and the as-yet unquoted Stetkevych write very slender volumes of a style that would make a formal outline (e.g. for a student) useless; the outlines would cover more pages than the text of the books. In either case, to make a detailed discussion more suitable to a pop-audience set on tertiary histories at best, the books would see their lengths quadrupled at least, so there's a legitimate argument to be made for separating so many words from the primary text.

Stetkevych: 112 pages text, 41 pages of notes, and then we get to the bibliography. The Pagels note above is an aberration; most of her notes are more traditionally concise. But even Pagels' book, which seeks a certain narrative comfort in its presentation, checks in at only 184 pages with 20 or so pages of notes. Hirschman's endnotes are entirely bibliographic.

Reading Hirshcman's footnotes, for instance, is barely a skip out of rhythm. It's not taxing to flip to the back of the book for Pagels. A few of the notes might be better-served as parenthetic citations, but hey ... she's the Princeton professor, so far be it for me to quibble such a small point.

But Stetkevych, as enlightening and nearly wondrous as it all seems, is problematic reading because it is arrhythmical by necessity of the information contained in the endnotes. However, I understand the problem of putting hundreds of words in small type at the bottom of the page; I have seen books before where the text of the page is only four or five lines long while a massive footnote plays itself out from the prior page.

And so I find myself at an odd moment of literary criticism regarding a book that I haven't even finished: should an author attempt a greater narrative presence in order to shepherd the broader information within the primary text, or do we reach a degree of informational transfer where accessibility isn't so prominent an issue and give over to a necessary degree of specialization that understands the footnotes and tolerates or even thrives within the stylistic arrhythmia?

The answer(s) have internal creative value as well, but for once I've been put in my place by the apparent necessity of what an author is trying to convey. I actually had to chain-smoke this morning (a rare occurrence for me) because I got pissed off at an endnote--"Oh, you've got to be (expletive gerund-as-adverb) kidding me!"
_____________________

Notes

° light turns blue - See Shel Silverstein, "Signals." From A Light in the Attic; embarrassingly, I have misplaced my copy of that book and am unable to bring you the page citation. I found an online copy of the poem, buried in someone's sentimental meanderings. See http://www.rapunzellstower.com/thirdfloor/silverstein.php

Works Cited

• Hirschman, Albert O. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1977.
• Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan. New York: Vintage, 1996 (1995)

See Also

• Stetkevych, Jaroslav. Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1996.

Tiassa:
And so I find myself at an odd moment of literary criticism regarding a book that I haven't even finished: should an author attempt a greater narrative presence in order to shepherd the broader information within the primary text, or do we reach a degree of informational transfer where accessibility isn't so prominent an issue and give over to a necessary degree of specialization that understands the footnotes and tolerates or even thrives within the stylistic arrhythmia?

You nut.

The footnote, my friend and my enemy. The footnote has no place in fiction (Unless it's a Terry Pratchett book), but it has a home in non-fiction. I expect footnotes in my non-fiction books. Some authors take it over-board; Ann Coulter's Slander has 720 footnotes.

Too many footnotes, or long footnotes, make the book a hard read. I suspect that most non-fiction authors write footnotes so they don’t have to fit it into their main text.

I look at the footnote in this perspective: the author couldn’t find a way to fit into the text, so he made a footnote. This way the information is still there and he doesn’t have to squeeze it into his main text.

Now, how long the footnote is and what information it contains is vital. I believe the perfect footnote to be less than 100 words. If they can't say it in less then 300, don't put it in the book.

What about the blue light? Why put that there? What was the point? Authors must ask themselves this so they don't end up having footnotes for their footnotes.

--The Grand Dragon Gizzard

What about the blue light?It's a form of the question as I generally ask it in life. I'm not allowed to claim it as my own work, though. And, having misplaced the volume, I might as well give an online reference.

If I spent 300 words explaining why I use the phrase ... now that would be just a little egocentric, at least.

There's a footnote in the middle of The Passions and the Interests where Hirschman goes off about some thesis in some book somewhere. I love how academics just don't seem to be allowed to disapprove of a theory without naming names. I suppose he's nodding to his contemporaries who might otherwise stumble where he operates contradictory to what might be reasonably-known in specialized circles, but the note seems absolutely extraneous.

And footnotes do have a place in fiction. It's just that most authors don't want to put the pretense into the story. You're on the right trail with Pratchett ... I'm actually thinking of the book he did with Gaiman. But if you construct the narrative voice in a certain manner, footnotes become a near-necessity. Of course, there's also the fact that such a voice is utterly pretentious, and given the demands of the bestseller-consuming audience these days, well ....

See the work of Steven Brust; there's not many footnotes, but you'll see verbose pretense by the boatload in the Khaavren Romances especially, and also in the Viscount cycle. I think there's only one or two footnotes in all of that, but Brust has all sorts of stuff like interviews with the "author" and editorial discussions within the context of the stories, and in Paths of the Dead he actually has a "publisher's note" written by Emma Bull and a literary analysis written by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Abusive, it would seem, but it's not really. In addition to making you beg for footnotes, the Khaavren Romances will demonstrate also why two doesn't equal two. (For a real-world equivalent, the reference starts with Dumas--writers who were paid by the word. Of course, that still happens, but with different results according to different publication priorities.)

Maybe I should have included parenthetic notes in the title as well.

I love footnotes!
In some old edition of Arabian Nights, the author went to great lengths to explain where each mythological aspect could have originated, what it could look like, where on the actual map the character went, etc. The footnotes were as interesting as the text, and very huge.... For example, a footnote went on the bottom of two pages; or, a footnote took (visually) 85% of the page :eek:
In the edition of Dante's Comedy, footnotes take more than the actual poem :eek: The author explained in detail all the historical and mythological references :eek: But it was a little too much. I mean, Dante is boring without the footnotes about every little official in Italy!

It all depends a lot on the kind of book.

In non-fiction, there are critical commentaries to texts; with the original text on the left and the commentary on the right, so that the notes take up about a half of the book.
The guideline is that if there are several (longer) notes for each page of the text, they are organized as endnotes, not as footnotes.

Sometimes, to preserve the original form of the text, fiction or non-fiction, all notes are in the end. Like some editions of Eco's "The Name of the Rose" have the translations of Latin terms and other explantions to the text added in the end. Eco didn't write notes to his text, so those explanations don't directly belong to it.

Tiassa,

And footnotes do have a place in fiction.

I now believe this to be true. I started reading Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard; within the first page he has a footnote. It reads:

Time, distance, and weight have been translated in all cases throughout this book to old Earth time, distance, and weight systems for the sake of uniformity and to prevent confusion in the various systems employed by the Psychlos.

This is the only footnote in the book; it's 20 words. No fancy information was brought up, and sure, he could have incorporated it into the book--but it didn't fit on the first page, or the second, or the third, and it was good that he put it there. If he hadn't the flow would have been interrupted.

You're on the right trail with Pratchett ... I'm actually thinking of the book he did with Gaiman.

Good Omens. It's one of the few books where I approve the use of footnotes. Pratchett pulls it off well, but I no longer read his books.

One book that uses footnotes exactly when needed is The Elements of Style. It's a book that I've begun to study in hopes of improving my writing; the footnotes are helpful too. When given an example from certain stories or articles, the author gives it a footnote. I don't have to read that book or article, but he has given me an example of proper writing that I should read and examine. It's a perfect book and everyone should have it. I think there’s a section on footnotes too.

THE FOOTNOTE by ANTHONY GRAFTON is a history of it and worth reading.
PALE FIRE by VLADIMIR NABOKOV is a novel where evrything happens in the footnotes.