Last year, sometime, I grappled with my lifelong terror of writing about Walter Pater, read lots of him, and penned an essay called "Pater, Looking," for the Cambridge Companion to Walter Pater. This was to have been edited by Francis O'Gorman, who sadly died almost exactly a year ago. He'd handed over the volume by then, but I still wanted the essay to be the best it could possibly be - a kind of academic homage to him.
And I'll admit, I was pleased with how the essay turned out - I still am. Until, that is, the request came back from CUP that each chapter has no more than 20 footnotes, and that none are discursive. I like footnotes, at least in generous moderation. Only one of mine could be called discursive, and I still maintain it's a necessary gloss. But you try and get a multi-quotationed chapter into 20 footnotes or less... In the end I managed 22, but I do think this is a crazy editorial decision that's been passed down from on high. And I'm sure I've introduced all kinds of new errors - it's bad enough remembering to do British, not US punctuation.
Let's just say that Gramsci wasn't any help.
Look at the little gentleman's white gloved paw! He seems to be saying, ask for forgiveness, not permission, where the notes are concerned.
ReplyDeletewell, maybe ... "the little gentleman"!! Try telling that to Moth ...
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