My first encounter with footnotes was indeed in high schoo in the late 80sl. I either used my small typewriter or the Commodore computer with the dot matrix printer. I hated footnotes and dreaded formatting them. When I began college, I was introduced to MLA Stule and grateful it existed. I would not use footnotes via CMS until I studied part-time in a graduate women's and gender studies program for a few years. By that time Word and Google Docs had the ability to format footnotes automatically. I do love footnotes too though. I find more things to read or ideas to thing about. Thank you for thus lovely post.
Laura, I learned from your grand comment that Word and Google Docs can format footnote correctly. I don't even know how this works. I still use Turabian. xo ~ Mary
I always crossed reference against CMS . My second grad program required CMS. Most of my students use Easy Bib. I tell them always and the librarians always tell to to cross reference against the style guide. Whew.
I for years hated footnotes, then a good friend told me he loved them. I wanted to shake him, assumed he was pulling my tail. But then I started to see the possibilities in them, the easter eggs as my old thesis advisor used to call them. I love the conversation that a footnote brought on, the stuff that didn't make it into the main book and is only for us nerds who are willing to go down the rabbit hole.
I so agree. One example I didn't use here is in John Updike's memoir _Self-Consciousness_, where he explains in a footnote the autobiographical nature of his terrific short story "Flight". What a treasure that little footnote is ...
First fell in love with footnotes while reading Infinite Jest. (Yes, I am THAT lit-bro.) House of Leaves used them creatively too. Those two books wouldn't've been nearly as entertaining to read without them.
I so agree about _Infinite Jest_ and add that Tim O'Brien used them quite brilliantly in _In the Lake of the Woods_ though his later novel _Tom Cat in Love_ disappointed. Love this comment, Andrew, and looking forward to your post ...
Footnotes can surely be what Mark describes, yet I'm a footnote lover. (Foot, too, but that's . . .) Like others, all depending on the leisure of my reading, I will move impatiently past them, but I also often stop. I think sometimes that the depths of knowledge are in their tiny grains: whole little worlds.
I'm also working on something with opera and “E lucevan le stelle” a part of it!
Such a beautiful essay, Mary! My grandfather was an economics professor at GW. My mom once told me about her delight at dating a man who said: ‘your father is a footnote in my textbook.’
Two memories. One from the Best American Poetry anthology (forget which year) of a poem written entirely AS footnotes. Struck me as silly and experimental for the sake of looking audacious, but I should have read it more closely and now wish I had.
I first became aware of footnotes, however, in a less-than-positive way after my father received an annotated collection of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. He read aloud to the family some evenings and started to do so from the new volume. But I suspect that he had/has an undiagnosed case of OCD, because he intended to interrupt the story by reading every footnote when it appeared, until we howled in protest. I suppose I've always had it in for footnotes as a result, but you've given good reasons to think again.
My first encounter with footnotes was indeed in high schoo in the late 80sl. I either used my small typewriter or the Commodore computer with the dot matrix printer. I hated footnotes and dreaded formatting them. When I began college, I was introduced to MLA Stule and grateful it existed. I would not use footnotes via CMS until I studied part-time in a graduate women's and gender studies program for a few years. By that time Word and Google Docs had the ability to format footnotes automatically. I do love footnotes too though. I find more things to read or ideas to thing about. Thank you for thus lovely post.
Laura, I learned from your grand comment that Word and Google Docs can format footnote correctly. I don't even know how this works. I still use Turabian. xo ~ Mary
I always crossed reference against CMS . My second grad program required CMS. Most of my students use Easy Bib. I tell them always and the librarians always tell to to cross reference against the style guide. Whew.
I for years hated footnotes, then a good friend told me he loved them. I wanted to shake him, assumed he was pulling my tail. But then I started to see the possibilities in them, the easter eggs as my old thesis advisor used to call them. I love the conversation that a footnote brought on, the stuff that didn't make it into the main book and is only for us nerds who are willing to go down the rabbit hole.
Thank you for this.
I so agree. One example I didn't use here is in John Updike's memoir _Self-Consciousness_, where he explains in a footnote the autobiographical nature of his terrific short story "Flight". What a treasure that little footnote is ...
I can’t wait to go check this out now. Thank you for sharing.
Please send any other great footnotes my way. Or, you know, any kind of notes at all
Lovely!
I love to footnote since 8th grade. Sosumi.
As you can tell: me too! Thanks so for reading and the adding the "sosumi" that I had to google: needed a footnote :)!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi
Thank you, Stirling!
I like the idea that it is recursive. See Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
I so agree, both in music and mathematics.
Literature as well, Homer uses it.
First fell in love with footnotes while reading Infinite Jest. (Yes, I am THAT lit-bro.) House of Leaves used them creatively too. Those two books wouldn't've been nearly as entertaining to read without them.
I so agree about _Infinite Jest_ and add that Tim O'Brien used them quite brilliantly in _In the Lake of the Woods_ though his later novel _Tom Cat in Love_ disappointed. Love this comment, Andrew, and looking forward to your post ...
Footnotes can surely be what Mark describes, yet I'm a footnote lover. (Foot, too, but that's . . .) Like others, all depending on the leisure of my reading, I will move impatiently past them, but I also often stop. I think sometimes that the depths of knowledge are in their tiny grains: whole little worlds.
I'm also working on something with opera and “E lucevan le stelle” a part of it!
Ah, as you can tell, I so agree ... Thank you for reading and commenting so personally -- and then that bit of humor ...
Such a beautiful essay, Mary! My grandfather was an economics professor at GW. My mom once told me about her delight at dating a man who said: ‘your father is a footnote in my textbook.’
Thank you, Alicia. And you so get me ... xo
Two memories. One from the Best American Poetry anthology (forget which year) of a poem written entirely AS footnotes. Struck me as silly and experimental for the sake of looking audacious, but I should have read it more closely and now wish I had.
I first became aware of footnotes, however, in a less-than-positive way after my father received an annotated collection of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. He read aloud to the family some evenings and started to do so from the new volume. But I suspect that he had/has an undiagnosed case of OCD, because he intended to interrupt the story by reading every footnote when it appeared, until we howled in protest. I suppose I've always had it in for footnotes as a result, but you've given good reasons to think again.
A good reason the hate the footnote ... You made me laugh actually, Josh ... xo
I love footnotes. I agree, they are gateways to new worlds. Anthony Grafton's book Footnote (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674307605) is worth reading.
That was exactly my point. I did buy Grafton's book at Mark DeLong's suggestion but didn't have time to read it before posting. Thank you, Jeanne.