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Another One from the Mothballs: The Art of Indexing

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I always thought it would be interesting to attempt to tell the story of your life purely in index form. I tried it once, without a whole lot of success. I'm sure there are others out there like me, though, people for whom the indexes of thick biographies are often better and more fascinating reading than the books themselves.

I was obsessed with indexing for a time. I acquired and pored over scores of books on the subject (H.B. Wheatley's How to Make an Index from 1902, A.L. Clarke's Manual of Practical Indexing from 1905, Robert L. Collison's Indexes and Indexing from 1959, among others). I even paid way too much money to acquire a copy of Der Index der Verbotenen Bucher (1899), which was in a language I do not read, and appears to have no practical bearing on my own interest in the subject. The great indexers are legendary obsessives. In 1848 a man named William F. Poole published a book called An Alphabetical Index to Subjects Treated in Reviews and Other Periodicals to Which No Indexes Have Been Published.

In his more recent Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting, Brian C. O'Connor poses the single most relevant question regarding the indexer's art: "Can we design systems that detect the treasure for each user?" Perusing indexes it's clear that every indexer worth his or her salt brings to this question a deeply personal set of priorities and proclivities. Check it out some time; it's fascinating to see what sorts of bizarre minutiae an indexer will choose to extract from a book's tangle of detail and incident.

I've been collecting these minutiae for years. Here's just a small sampling (and I would, of course, welcome any interesting contributions you might have stumbled across):

From Margaret Drabble's Angus Wilson: A Biography:

Fear of falling, 556, 592; tendency to fall, 599, 601; lack of sense of balance, 603, 604; serious fall, 623-4; in nursing home, 642-3.

 

From Gerald Clarke's Capote: A Biography:

Dancing of, 58, 101, 102; eavesdropping and snooping of, 180-81, 206-7, 294; as love life advisor, 166, 168; sleepwalking of, 44; Montalban, Ricardo, 298.

 

From Donald Spoto's The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Of Alfred Hitchcock:

Gastronomic Life: potatoes, 14; three-steak meal, 187; gulping, 412; Personal Life, Habits, Attitudes, and Traits: mustache, 95; woman in the back of a taxi, 162, 374, 432, 433, 531; destruction of crockery, 187, 192; interest in strangling, 353, 527; spiritual transvestism, 432-33.

 

From William Manchester's Winston Churchill biography, The Last Lion:

Silk underwear for skin sensitivity, 399; national crisis while bathing, 418-19; attitude while playing polo, 241-42; skin donation to wounded soldier with Kitchener, 283; bricklaying, 776, 883.

 

From John Baxter's Bunuel:

Death, fascination with, 15, 24; menagerie, 14; obsessive punctuality, 183; orgies, participation in, 116-17; phone, hating, 295; pistols, fascination with, 202-3.

 

From David Sweetman's Van Gogh: His Life and His Art:

Tooth trouble, 203, 262; wears candles in hat, 278; throws glass at Gauguin, 289; razor attack on Gauguin, 290, 306; kicks attendant, 307.

 

From Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith's Jackson Pollock: An American Saga:

Beguiling smile of, 2, 4, 94, 808; dimples of, 2-3, 44, 161, 808; drunken binges of, 2-3, 6, 7, 117, 120, 168, 170, 197, 212-14, 247-48, 249-50, 255, 266-67, 294-95, 296-98, 302, 306, 310-11, 314, 335-36, 359-60, 448, 449, 491, 572, 669-71, 686, 844; fights provoked by, 6, 140-41, 145, 204, 212, 228, 247-48, 265, 267, 297, 302, 310, 350, 481, 488-89, 498, 570, 572, 715, 755, 900; mouth harp played by, 208, 220, 247, 833, 834; urinary habits of, 50-51, 469, 478, 489, 541, 612, 671, 753, 760, 762, 770, 788, 813, 818, 867, 876, 904; weeping of, 249, 297, 581, 740, 763, 770, 778, 782, 787, 901, 904; Ives, Burl, 170, 828.

 

From Mary Tyler Moore's After All:

Richie's rescued pigeon, 208-210; assassination threats, 269-71; Blue Chip stamp collecting, 382-83; crossword puzzles, 383; Gomer Pyle, 113; hitting bottom, 349-50; mother's addiction to pinball machines, 12-13; as inept liar, 279-82; O'Neill, Tip, 280, 281; Kershaw, Doug, 236; Busey, Gary, 207.

2 Reader Comments

AK (not verified)10:00am
Mar 3
telling Gauguin one thing, then doing another, 392; setting up water bucket to fall on Gauguin when he opens the door, 398; filling Gauguin's jacket pocket with creme brulee, 402; telling Gauguin's wife about his mistress, 408; starting bag of dog crap on fire on Gauguin's front steps, 413; filling Gauguin's riding coach with fish guts, 417; putting Gauguin's horse in his studio when he was away on business, 419; confusing Gauguin with faux bird call, 484; confusing Gauguin again the next day with faux bird call, 485; paying doctor to tell Gauguin he has only weeks to live, 502; shaving off half Gauguin's moustache while he was passed out, 511; replacing missing half-moustache on passed out Gauguin with black magic marker, 512; cutting off Gauguin's riding jodhpurs above the knee, 514.
Clammy Reese (not verified)11:23am
Mar 5
From Curt Sampson's biography, Hogan: Hogan, William Ben (Ben) best of times, 100 career stopped dead, 115 deterioration of eyesight, 165 draft notice and army induction, 91 father's death, 11, 12, 13, 120, 246 imaginary friend, "Hennie Bogan," xx, 26, 41 reason for having no children, 108 ruptured appendix, 240 surgery after car accident, 121 - 123 tragic accident with Greyhound bus, 116 - 120

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