‘This book is a catalog of the life project’
I am in a bad writing phase or something. I haven’t been writing very much recently. Instead of writing, I’m reading a lot of things: student papers, composition textbooks, books to review, and then some stuff to make me feel better. Everyone has that shelf or two of books that they read to feel better, I guess. I’m rereading Ben Marcus. Slowly. I just finished Notable American Women a few days ago. Now I’ll start The Age Of Wire And String. I pulled the book off my shelf to look at it and a few pieces of paper fell out.
I might have shown this to a couple of people, so sorry if this is old news.
On the papers is an index. I made an index of all the terms Marcus defines in the book and listed the page number of the definition. I made this index one summer a few years ago. I enjoyed making it. It made me feel busy and involved in something. I don’t know if it is worthwhile. I don’t even know if this makes sense.
But some of the terms you can actually look up as you read – DROWNING METHOD, for example, shows up in the text on page 10, but it isn’t defined until page 94.
That was a good summer.
Okay, here it is after the jump (and I understand if you make fun of me):