Index linked?

I should have known better. But when my publishers asked me if I wanted to prepare the index of my new book myself, or have them get a professional, I instantly said that I would do it myself.

The main reason was that I have, in the past,  seen some really dreadful, so-called “professional” indexes (the kind where you are enticed by an entry to – say -- Virginia Woolf, only to find, on looking it up, some such phrase as “Born in the same year as Virginia Woolf, our hero….”). I also self-importantly thought that only I, as author, would be able quickly to identify the underlying themes that were most worth signalling (so making the kind of index that transcends the simple computer word search, and, at its best, gives a parallel intellectual structure to the book for an attentive index reader).

There was a hopelessly optimistic side to this too. I thought that at this last stage I would positively enjoy reading the whole typescript through, post-partally, for one last time, then sitting back to reflect on the main index-able themes. I was going  to create an index-to-die-for.

I should have known better. For a start, I’ve done this before – and should know that those days of leisurely re-reading in an arm-chair never quite materialize; it’s always a rush. I had also read the long correspondence in the TLS at the end of last year, all about the pitfalls of indexing. That should have reminded me.

As it turns out, I’ve spent five days on it (for 440 pages of book), and actually I am not un-pleased with the result. But it hasn’t been remotely fun doing it.

First of all, there’s the re-inventing the wheel problem. If I was a (good) professional indexer, I’d already be up-to-speed on this. But in my apprentice-like state, I have to think through the basic questions of categorization from the bottom up. My book is about the Roman Triumph. So do I have hundreds of entries saying things like, “Triumph, origins of”, “Triumph of Lucius Aemilius Paullus”, or “Lucius Aemilius Paullus, triumph of” ….or what ? (Actually what I decided was to have a big sub-heading in the index in bold caps, saying TRIUMPH … and all those subheadings underneath, “origin of”, “chariot in”. “deification and”.  . . and so on. Hope it works.)

But just as tricky was what to leave out. This is the Virginia Woolf problem. There are references all over the book to (for example) the historian Dio Cassius. Does each one need an index link? (“As Dio emphasizes, the triumph was . .. . “. ) Well, no – but how do you decide? The principle has to be: would any reader looking up a reference to Dio through my index actually want to arrive at this page? Which is fine in theory, but I can tell you that at midnight, and half a bottle of wine later, it can prove hard to make up your mind.

Then there’s the jokes. I’ve loved index-jokes ever since my friend Keith Hopkins slipped one into the index of his Death and Renewal. It ran, “Methods, authentication from fragmentary evidence, passim” -- with other entries for "speculation", "tautology" and "deviants, punished". I flirted with a few (“Ancient historical study, self-indulgent futility of, passim”, “Triumph, Roman, fun to study”) but rejected them -- mostly on the grounds that I couldn’t imagine enjoying them in two months time – let alone ten years time, when I hope the book will still be around. So I settled for a parody of, and homage to, my much missed friend, “'Facts', fragility of , passim”

Which just happens to be true as well.

PS. Unusually this blog comes with thanks: to Toby Lichtig, TLS internet maestro for putting the whole indexing correspondence onto a single link (enjoy it now you can, everyone!); and to the folks at Harvard University Press, for patience (inter alia).

Comments

[sara]

Probably Borges or Nicholson Baker has a joke about a book subsumed by its own index: the map becomes the territory. At a certain point you have to call a halt, though Classics traditionally has had the indulgence of indices locorum (now frequently omitted by frugal publishers).

Does anyone still make their index by hand (i.e., without automation)? I have done this for both my books. I have an old Word program (for Mac) and could not get it to create a nested index without crashing repeatedly.

[Wendy Christian]

From the Lost Worlds blog:

"But then the indescribably-more-distinguished-than-I-will-ever-be Mary Beard pops up on The ("Blogs will be the salvation of the MSM") Times to reassure me that I am not alone."

The real fun is to be had in providing the index for a translation from French, for a wildly ambitious typesetter with no English. Of all his attempted alterations, my favourite was :

George, King, Her Majesty, England, of

[SW Foska]

Here is Syme: "The task has been long and laborious (for all that ostensible drudgery can be sheer delight). It has been hampered by various delays and vexations. Nor, in making the written text fit for publication and compiling the vast index, can aid or alleviation be recorded from any academic body, from any fund or foundation dedicated to the promotion of research in history and letters." To be fair, he goes on to use this as a reason to thank three people "with alacrity and a deeper gratitude" for their help "at different stages between manuscript and final proof".

[Tony Francis]

Lou, I agree with you that there is nothing innocent about addiction. The point of the physician from California was that narcotic use is more of a habit, without a physical dependence. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. I frequently see chronic pain patients who are addicted to narcotics. Their behavior deteriorates, becoming reclusive and avoidant, flat affect, inability to function in normal social situations, etc. Narcotics are depressants, and induce depressive bahavior. The number of narcortic addicts who get their fix at the doctor's office is astounding. However, there is a permissive attitude among many professionals. I have heard any number of psychiatrists and psychologists testify that if a person needs narcotics to function, there is nothing wrong with it. Of course the obvious question: would you hire this person (with all the attendant liability) if you knew they were taking 10 percodan or vicodin a day? Anyway, look up poppyseed tea on pubmed (the NHI site) and see the variance of opinion on its use.

[Lou Foxcroft]

There is little that is innocent about addiction, even in a mere mention. The importunate Lord Bywater had it:
addiction
-- degeneracy a necessary precursor
-- as Aristotelian parasite
-- qualitatively different from other desires
-- a universal behaviour
He is the Mother of all Indexers.

[Tony Francis]

Concerning Lord Bywater: he is correct about confusion concerning addiction. Several years ago I was giving a paper and innocently mentioned the word "addiction". Someone in the audience (from California) jumped down my throat and said that what I had described was a [an] "habituation", not "addiction". (Whatever!) I run into a lot of addiction in the reports I write. I am still gun shy after the tongue lashing I got: I always write: "there appears to be a clear pattern of narcotic addiction/habituation." The US judges aren't so picky as that guy in California. I looked this up on pubmed and found there is a long standing subculture in East Anglia of drinking poppy seed tea. The people at Cambridge found this to be an innocent activity. In New Zealand, they use poppy seed tea to treat narcotic addicted/(habituated?) patients. But they noticed the subjects got high within about 15 minutes, and stayed that way for 24 hours. They feared it might be a gateway drug. On the US west coast, they use methadone. It isn't used much in the midwest.

[Oliver Nicholson]

I thought Syme was rather proud of writing his own indices. When he got the proofs of that for "The Roman Revolution" he was puzzled by an entry "Maecenas, interest in goats". It was only on studying his holograph that he recognised that this interest had been intended to be more Horatian than haedological.
OPN

[Mary]

Oh dear, Bywater... what a partial form of misremembering I have. Still, "unacknowledged influence, of, passim " isn't bad...

Am distinctly relieved that Foska wasn't implying that MB and AG were themselves grumpy -- my mistake!

[Michael Bywater]

'"Beard, Mary, better scholar than I'll ever be..." ... or do I misremember?'

The latter, I fear, though the former is also true. The actual entries are:

Beard, Mary
-- exegesis on Parthenogenic weeping, unflattering, 107n
-- unacknowledged influence of, passim

[SW Foska]

Mary, I think you are right about Syme, he is being both grumpy and smug.
But careful - Foska was proposing you and Grafton as editors, not contributors! S/he admires your good humour always.

[Tony Francis]

Mary, there is a package coming your way. It contains about 100 books from the Wichita State U. library. Please, PA-LEEZE! give these books indexes, or re-do the existing index. I know you can do it! They will be arriving by DHS/UPS/FEDEX in the most efficient manner possible using the travelling salesman problem. Please hurry, they can only be checked out for a month, although I can renew them over the phone if you need a little more time. Thanks in advance.

[Mary]

Ms/r Foska just prompted me to take a look at Syme's preface.. I couldnt quite get the toone. Is he pissed off that he hasn't benefited from any fun or foundation? Or is he proud not to have had anything to do with that new-fangled rubblis? Or, I guess, both

And by the way, Foska, the excellent Prof Grafton and I are about the least grumpy scholars I know!!

As for Lord Bywater... the truth is that I tried to find his book as I wrote my index blog, but it was hiding under too big a pile somewhere. But folks, I do recommend him as a nobel laureate of the genre. (And his is the only index in which I've ever seen an explicitly flattering reference to myself...as in "Beard, Mary, better scholar than I'll ever be..." ... or do I misremember?)

[Michael Bywater]

You've had it now, M. Beard. You will get SUCKED IN. I've indexed two of my own books -- largely because I thought it would (a) be fun and (b) gave me an excuse to buy the brilliant Cindex indexing software -- and then did a friend's book (Louise Foxcroft, The Making of Addiction) & in each case it was a bit like doing one of those join-the-dots puzzles: what emerged at the end was a delightful meta-text revealing themes that neither I nor Dr Foxcroft had seen in the main body of the book. I discovered, for example, that for an avowed atheist I was remarkably engaged with God; The Foxcroft index revealed the hilarious mutability of 'The Lancet' opinion on opium (ab)use. And I think the highlight (and Triumph) of my life was being invited to give the keynote speech at the American Society of Indexers conference in Pasadena...

The comparison between computer-generated and your own indexes will be fascinating. Indexing is a cognitive and critical enterprise & scope for fun. (My favourite entry is "revenants: SEE mead.")

Bet you're importuning friends and colleagues to let you index their books before the year's out. "Go on. Let me. Pleeease. Just one, then I'll quit..."

But doing your own index isn't without pitfalls, even if, like me, you're allowed to make slightly surreal entries. I find on my current book I am writing some passages thinking "Gosh, this is going to come up well in the index" which may indicate a cart/horse category error... but it's fun all the same.

[sw foska]

You mean you've written a book about Triumphs?! Congratulations, I hope they promote you to be motoring correspondent! My Mum & Dad used to have a Triumph, but they sold it to buy a Rover. I was four at the time and well miffed.
And when you & that Grafton chap get to edit the Oxford Book of Grumpy Scholars Complaining about Indexes, don't forget Syme's preface to his Tacitus monograph, which I recall being quite good on this aspect. I'll post the relevant passage when I next have it to hand.

[tony grafton]

Dear Mary,

From Isaac Casaubon's diary, 2 February 1614 (OS): Hodie ab instituta cogitatione rejectus sum ad curandos indices, quos ille corruperat, qui onus in se susceperat. And 5 February: Et illiberales istae curae de indicibus me plane occupant . . . Tu, Domine, miserere. Amen. Hodie absolvi indicem auctorum et descripsi inter varias curas et impedimenta insigni usus diligentia.

There are some continuities in the lives of serious scholars . . .

[Xjy]

What I find myself doing with a book I need to know and find my way around is constructing my own index. No substitute for reading with a pencil. The gist of quotes and the page, inside the back cover. I can usually manage with that. But that's for "reading" books (like say Capital or De rerum natura). Reference books (like an Icelandic or Latin grammar) need an altogether more active approach. Capital (the Moscow eds anyway) has a plethora of indexes (names, works, periodicals, subject). The subject index is by far the slipperiest. The best index is probably a decent table of contents, really.
Or an electronic edition in conjunction with a good search engine.
Should a subject index actually work, of course, the pleasure is intense and the satisfaction immense.

[Tony Francis]

Mary, I can't emphasize what an aid to research a well-structured index can be. Before I was on-line, I used to live at the library researching various topics. Nothing is better than looking up a subject in the index, and actually finding something of relevance in the text. Nothing is more frustrating than finding a passing mention in the text, which is of no value. There are some indexes which contain references which don't exist on the pages indicated. I never kept track, but I would guess it is up to 10% of books that have this. (It would make an interesting reseach project.) Sometimes I go to the library in search of a book or subject I read years ago. A good index is priceless. Have you thought of comparing your "hand-written" index with the computer generated one? That might be interesting. When I was an editor to a medical-legal journal, I got into the habit of looking up every reference cited in the submitted article. It is amazing how many times articles are mis-quoted or don't even exist. I saw some research a few years ago indicating that 50% of all medical articles in reputable journals have errors in the statistics. It is a little trick tort lawyers use to impeach experts (assuming they are aware of it).

[anthony alcock]

Some years ago I produced a translation of a German book (on Egyptian solar religion) including new passages specially written by the author for the English version. I translated the old index and incorporated the necessary entries to accommodate the new stuff. I sent all of this to the author, and he prepared the camera-ready copy for the publisher. When I got the one copy translators get from stingy publishers, I was a bit miffed to find that the author, among his effusive acknowledgements, actually thanked a student of his for preparing the index. I took this to be an illustration of the patron-client relationship that is not uncommon at German universities

[Jesper]

I look foward to reading your index - I simply love this blog