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devaluing content notes” (402). As Hilbert went on to write “the
footnote today survives in universities only in tiny pockets of
retrograde activity, required solely by those department curmudgeons now
nearing retirement who still insist their students know the English
translation of ibid”2(402).
That ibid (and the growing number of readers
who don’t know what ibid means) may have contributed to the
footnote’s decline. When Harry Belafonte read W.E. DuBois’s Color
and Democracy, he noticed that “at the end of some sentences there
was a number, and if you looked at the foot of the page the reference
was to what it was all about—what source DuBois gleaned this information
from. Belafonte “went to a library with a long list of books he wanted
to borrow,” but the librarian told him he was asking for too many. So he
said, “I can make it very easy. Just get me everything you got by I
bid.” When the librarians told him there was no such author, Belafonte
called her a racist, and accused her of “trying to keep (him) in
darkness.” He left the library angry (Gates 135).
Writers have attacked both ibid and its
relatives. G.W. Bowersock wrote that “Lively entries avoid supra,
infra, ibid and id, all of which have given
footnotes a bad name” (55). Mary-Claire van Leunen wrote that “when you
hear the comment ‘the best part was the footnotes,’ you can be sure that
doesn’t mean the ibids and op cits” (89). Frank
Sullivan, in an amusing book review entitled “A Garland of Ibids,” began
“I have been rendered cockeyed by the footnotes” (155). Bowersock in
“The Art of the Footnote” lists footnote abuses and excesses, including
too many footnotes, and footnotes3 that are too long.
But most scholars agree that the combination of
publishers’ desires to cut costs by eliminating footnotes, and students’
dislike of typing them, are the most important influences behind the
MLA’s decision to assassinate the footnote. The endnote, which replaced
the footnote, is disliked by many teachers and readers, who resent
having to search through pages at the back of the book, going back and
forth between the original text and the endnotes. As Himmelfarb writes,
“it takes two bookmarks to keep track of one’s place in the text and in
the back of the book” (1).
Protests against the elimination of the footnote and
defenses of footnotes rose from many sources. Bowersock wrote that a
footnote “in the hands of a master can become a work of art and an
instrument of power” (54), and listed some of the uses to which a
footnote can be put: advise the reader of the relevant source or
sources; explain or elaborate unfamiliar material; debunk myths; expose
the errors (or forgeries) of others; and award praise or blame (56).
But, as Himmelfarb points out, there are fewer and fewer footnotes, even
in huge books on major topics, such as Simon Schama’s 948 page
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, 1989.
But if footnotes in scholarly nonfiction have almost
disappeared, perhaps contemporary novelists, poets, and dramatists will
come to their rescue. Eighteenth-century fiction writers employed
footnotes. Henry Fielding used them in Tom Jones, 17494
to comment on the story, to enter into it, to become a part of it. The
text reads, “The Tortoise, as the Alderman of Bristol, well-learned in
eating, knows by much Experience, etc,” while the accompanying footnote
reads: “Owing to the extravagant feasts consumed on such civic occasions
as the Lord Mayor’s dinner, the gluttony of aldermen was proverbial”
(32). Laurence Sterne in Tristam Shandy, 1760–1767, used
footnotes to challenge statements made by his characters. In one
footnote he points out mistakes made by the fictional Shandy.
In the twentieth century, authors began to use
footnotes in new ways. Mary Karr in the introductory essay to the Modern
Library edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Other Writings,
discusses “The Waste Land’s impenetrability” (x), and adds that “The
author’s notes, written in a somewhat dodgy and sometimes coy tone, tend
to confuse rather than illuminate the poem’s references, its quotes and
quirks” (XIV). But Hilbert opines that Eliot’s footnotes to The
Waste Land were never intended to elucidate, but “serve to add
another layer to the poem” (403). Whatever Eliot’s intentions, those
struggling to understand the poem are undoubtedly frustrated by
footnotes that deepen the darkness, rather than shedding light.5
James Joyce used footnotes in Finnegan’s Wake,
1939. According to Benstock, his notes are the voices of various
characters and “develop a new line of narrative” (205). Perhaps, but
since most of the voices in both the text and the footnotes are
incomprehensible, it is difficult to say. For example, the text reads
“we see the copyngink strayed-line AL (In Fig., the forest) from being
continued, stops ait Lambday,” while the accompanying footnote reads “Ex
jup pep off Carpenger Strate. The kids’ and dolls’ home. Makeacake-ache”
(294).
J.D. Salinger includes a very long footnote (nearly a
page) in Franny and Zooey, 1961. It begins “The aesthetic evil
of a footnote seems in order just here, I’m afraid” (52). He then goes
on to describe the history of the seven Glass children, including the
deaths of Seymour and Boo Boo, and the whereabouts of the others.
In Seymour, an Introduction, 1963, Salinger’s
footnotes intervene, making the author part of the story. Example: “This
modest aspersion is thoroughly reprehensible, but the fact that the
great Kierkegaard was never a Kierkegaardian, let alone an
existentialist, cheers one bush-league intellectual’s heart to no end,
never fails to reaffirm his faith in a cosmic poetic justice, if not a
cosmic Santa Claus” (117).
Garrison Keillor not only used footnotes in Lake
Wobegon Days, 1985, but also defended the practice. As he
explained, “I was pleased with the footnotes in the book…There is
supporting material which can be read in sequence or earlier or just
glanced at or eliminated entirely, and that can go into footnotes. It
really allows a person freedom of digression that you want in a book.
And I like the idea of a book being packed and rich and having layers” (Robeck
139).
Lake Wobegon is crammed with discursive
footnotes, some brief, as in a reference to a man fishing: “It is Dr.
Nute, retired after forty odd years of dentistry, now free to ply the
waters in the Molar II, and drop a line where the fighting sunfish lie
in wait. ‘Open wide,’ he says ‘This may sting a little bit. Okay. Now
bite down’” (2). Or a footnote can run on for half a page or more, as in
the author’s discussion of front porch society and rules. Indeed,
Keillor included “What I believe to be the longest footnote in American
fiction” (252-274).
With the advent of the Postmodern Age, fiction writers
began to use footnotes in even more original ways. John Fowles, in
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1969, does not number his footnotes,
as if to make the point that the footnote is not a reference to a
specific point in the novel. He corrects his characters—e.g., when a
character uses the word “agnostic,” Fowles points out in a footnote that
the word doesn’t yet exist. He imparts interesting information such as a
description of the first condom (or sheath) and becomes a part of the
story, as in his statement “I had better here, as a reminder,” etc., in
a modern commentary on actions and dialogue set in the past. Fowles also
uses headnotes, mostly quotations from everyone from Arnold and Austen
to Tennyson, and he sometimes refers to a headnote in a footnote.
In Sabbatical, 1982, John Barth confounds the
reader on the first page with a footnote that reads “This we, those
verses, Susan’s tears, these notes at the feet of certain pages. All
shall be made clear, in time” (1). Why tell us this? Do we believe it?
Many of Barth’s footnotes sound false. But are they? His text is crammed
with fictional news reports, and many of his cultural references are
unverifiable. Barth constantly reminds the reader that the world he is
writing about is unreal. Instead of using footnotes to create
verisimilitude, he uses them to make the reader doubt the truth of what
is being read.
Finally, Tim O’Brien, in his much admired In the
Lake of the Woods, 1994, uses fictional footnotes composed of
nonexistent newspaper reports, and reports pertaining to historical
events altered to fit into his imagined world, a new and interesting
technique. The use of these footnotes lends verisimilitude to his book,
but at the same time, the voice of the narrator sometimes appears in a
footnote. This intervention by the author reminds the reader that this
is, after all, fiction.
As Hilburt advises, “Never turn your back on a wounded
literary genre. The creature is resurrecting itself, sniggering softly
at its own cenotaph. The footnote is being reborn in another medium,
learning to survive in contemporary fiction” (402). Welcome back, old
friends.
____________
1 See Gertrude Himmelfarb’s
“Where Have all the Footnotes Gone?” for a list of
supposedly scholarly works without footnotes, sometimes
with bibliographical essays, but lacking page numbers
and other essential information for corroboration.
2 Ibid: In the same source, from
the Latin, “in the same place.”
3 For a send-up of writers using too many
footnotes, see Nathaniel Benchley’s hilarious essay, “Shakespeare
Explained,” in The Benchley Roundup, 33.
4 See Shari Benstock’s discussion of the use
of footnotes in Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, and
Finnegan’s Wake, in “At the Margin of Discourse.”
5 In an undergraduate class in Modern
Poetry, the professor taught The Waste Land in a version
without the notes.
Works Cited
Barth, John.
Sabbatical. New York:
Putnam, 1982.
Benchley, Nathanial. “Shakespeare Explained.”
The Benchley Roundup.
New York: Harper,
1954. 33-35.
Benstock,
Shari. “At the Margin of Discourse: Footnotes in the
Fictional Text.” PMLA 98
(1983)
: 204-225
Bowersock, G.W. “The Art of the Footnote.”
The American Scholar. 53.2
(1983-1984):
54-62.
Fielding, Henry.
Tom Jones. 1749.
New York: Modern Library, 1985.
Fowles, John.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman. 1969. New York:
Little, 1998.
Gates, H.L. “Belafonte’s Balancing Act.”
The New Yorker.
6 August 1996, 132-143.
Grafton, Anthony.
The Footnote, A Curious History.
1997. Boston: Harvard, 1999.
Hilbert, Betsy. “Elegy for Excursus: The Descent of
the Footnote.” College English. 51.4 (1989)
: 400-404.
Himmelfarb, Gertude. “Where Have All the Footnotes
Gone?” New York Times Book Review
.
June 16, 1991, p.1, 24.
Joyce, James.
Finnegan’s Wake. 1939. New York:
Penguin, 1999.
Karr, Mary. “How to Read
The
Waste
Land So It Alters Your Soul Rather
Than Just Addling
Your Head.” Introduction.
The
Waste
Land and Other Writings. By T. S. Eliot. New York:
Modern Library, 2001.
Keillor, Garrison.
Lake
Wobegon Days. 1985. New York:
Penguin, 1986.
---. Interview by Diane Robeck.
Publishers Weekly
13 September 1985. 138-139.
O’Brien, Tim.
In the Lake of the
Woods. New York:
Penguin, 1994.
Salinger, J.D.
Franny and Zooey. 1961.
New York: Little, 1991.
---. Raise
High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and
Seymour:
An Introduction. 1959. Boston:
Little, 1987.
Sterne, Laurence.
Tristram Shandy. 1760-1767.
1912. New York: Knopft,
1991.
Sullivan, Frank. “A Garland
of Ibids.” The Antic Muse. Ed.
R.P. Falk. New York:
Grove, 1955.
55-58.
Van Leunen, Mary-Claire, “The Content Footnote.”
1978. A Handbook for Scholars. New
York:
Oxford, 1992. 89-101.
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