During the lockdown I began re-reading CD and see his influence on so much. But I still didn't know this until this week....locked in libraries all over the world..these little unknown fragments.
I love the freshness and intricate charm of this blog. I love how personal it is, in the sense that it conveys your intellectual idiosyncrasies and enthusiasms with so much charm. The entry about ham radio a few days ago was a great example. And now this! The well seems bottomless.
When I'm talking to people who don't know what Substack is I usually use this blog as one example of something no other platform has been able to do: make available distinct, inquisitive, creative minds to which we never would have had access without Substack. It's deeply fun. Thank you so much.
O, thank you so much. I teach a course on the History of Books and Libraries so roam around the backfiles of history a lot. And I can usually find a library connection for issues of the day. And I can access scholarly journals and get to do one of my fav. things--footnotes.
Today I learned that while in prison in Siberia Dostoyevsky had a smuggled copy of Dickens' Pickwick Papers and that PP influenced FD's writing of crowd scenes in his later novels. I don't think many people put CD and FD together . I know I didn't. I need to re-read PP if I ever read it....think I started w/ Oliver Twist.
BLUNT INSTRUMENT-I love this observation: "For centuries, then, the footnote existed as a blunt instrument, wielded by pedants and populists alike, primarily for the transmission of information, but occasionally to antagonize opponents with arch rhetorical asides. But it would take a couple hundred years until writers again took up the footnote for other, more artful purposes, discovering in this tiny technique emotional and intellectual depth far beyond the realm of the merely experimental."
People are always writing "lol" without actually loling but in this case I did lol - several times - and even went back for a second serving from the line "ruefully observe[d]: 'Until now, I suppose.'"
It's also astonishing to find out about Notes Without a Text written in 1743 (!).
The footnote/endnote distinction is a good one. When I have sung in praise of Pale Fire, a book I love unreservedly (but recommend only reservedly) I always say it's mostly footnotes, but that isn't accurate at all. Pale Fire is the only work of long fiction that I regularly open to any random page and read with glee. I consider it a masterpiece. I wrote this short tribute to Nabokov years ago: https://www.facebook.com/notes/10221457898610311
Magnificent article. Thank you so much for the link and the terrific blog.
That's a very smart summary to PF's wit & its writer's way of thinking. It might have been also his linguistic facilities. I ran across the fact that one of his grand (great) was Dostoyevsky's interrogators in the Peter Paul fortress in 1848. How intertwined they all were.
Read about this before: tempted to go down the rabbit hole!
elm
so much to do
I sent this to a friend who does codebreaking for fun - what a cool thing!
During the lockdown I began re-reading CD and see his influence on so much. But I still didn't know this until this week....locked in libraries all over the world..these little unknown fragments.
Fascinating topic! Had not heard of this.
So freaking cool!
I love the freshness and intricate charm of this blog. I love how personal it is, in the sense that it conveys your intellectual idiosyncrasies and enthusiasms with so much charm. The entry about ham radio a few days ago was a great example. And now this! The well seems bottomless.
When I'm talking to people who don't know what Substack is I usually use this blog as one example of something no other platform has been able to do: make available distinct, inquisitive, creative minds to which we never would have had access without Substack. It's deeply fun. Thank you so much.
O, thank you so much. I teach a course on the History of Books and Libraries so roam around the backfiles of history a lot. And I can usually find a library connection for issues of the day. And I can access scholarly journals and get to do one of my fav. things--footnotes.
Today I learned that while in prison in Siberia Dostoyevsky had a smuggled copy of Dickens' Pickwick Papers and that PP influenced FD's writing of crowd scenes in his later novels. I don't think many people put CD and FD together . I know I didn't. I need to re-read PP if I ever read it....think I started w/ Oliver Twist.
Footnotes are one of your favorite things? I have to ask: have you read Nabokov's "Pale Fire"?
Ah, but endnotes.
BLUNT INSTRUMENT-I love this observation: "For centuries, then, the footnote existed as a blunt instrument, wielded by pedants and populists alike, primarily for the transmission of information, but occasionally to antagonize opponents with arch rhetorical asides. But it would take a couple hundred years until writers again took up the footnote for other, more artful purposes, discovering in this tiny technique emotional and intellectual depth far beyond the realm of the merely experimental."
https://lithub.com/the-fine-art-of-the-footnote/
People are always writing "lol" without actually loling but in this case I did lol - several times - and even went back for a second serving from the line "ruefully observe[d]: 'Until now, I suppose.'"
It's also astonishing to find out about Notes Without a Text written in 1743 (!).
The footnote/endnote distinction is a good one. When I have sung in praise of Pale Fire, a book I love unreservedly (but recommend only reservedly) I always say it's mostly footnotes, but that isn't accurate at all. Pale Fire is the only work of long fiction that I regularly open to any random page and read with glee. I consider it a masterpiece. I wrote this short tribute to Nabokov years ago: https://www.facebook.com/notes/10221457898610311
Magnificent article. Thank you so much for the link and the terrific blog.
That's a very smart summary to PF's wit & its writer's way of thinking. It might have been also his linguistic facilities. I ran across the fact that one of his grand (great) was Dostoyevsky's interrogators in the Peter Paul fortress in 1848. How intertwined they all were.