Back Words Indexing
Back-of-the-Book Indexes
for Publishers and Authors

index: challenges of, 598; as revelatory of book's nature, 598; typo in, 633; as work of art, 598

By the way, there is no page 633.

There has been a friendly and sometimes less-than-friendly rivalry between William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer going on for many decades. In the index to one of Buckley's books, under "Mailer, Norman" are no page references, just this message" "Hi Norm." Obviously Buckley expected Mailer to pick the book up off a rack in a bookstore and immediately look for references to himself in the index.

Melinda Davis reports that in a Winter 1999 Garden Book Club flyer, the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion  is advertised as "featuring 300 blind cross-references."  Since the definition of "blind" cross-reference is one that leads the reader to a non-existent reference -"wild goose chase" would be a valid translation. To quote my husband: "This is a bug, not a feature."

"The" has its place. That, more or less, is the theme of Glenda Browne's treatise called The Definite Article: Acknowledging "the" in Index Entries. The "the" article appears in The Indexer, the information- and fun-packed publication for professional indexers everywhere. The Indexer has its own index, which includes an entry for Browne, Glenda. Internationally, the "the" problem is not the problem, it is merely a problem. Browne makes this clear at the very start of her paper, with a quotation from indexing maven Hans Wellisch: "Happy is the lot of an indexer of Latin, the Slavic languages, Chinese, Japanese, and some other tongues, which do not have articles, whether definite or indefinite, initial or otherwise." ~ August 1, 2005 in the Guardian at http://tinyurl.com/2zetqe or http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable/story/0,,1834107,00.html

In the movie version of P.D. James' "Shroud for a Nightingale," detective Adam Dalgliesh is is leafing through a book looking for information and says something to the effect, "I couldn't find anything pertinent as I looked through the book, and there's NO INDEX".

* Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross-references.

The index embraces its silly side
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | October 21, 2004

A reader writes: "It may be time for a witty column on `Whatever Happened to the Index?' I love Jim [James] Carroll dearly, but his publisher has cashiered the index for his newest book, `Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War,' leaving those who might want to rely upon his words searching through the entire book for the desired point."

Indexes, subject of. They might be called the policemen of literature; they never seem to be around when you need them. (Although Carroll said in an interview he didn't think "Crusade," a collection of columns, needed an index.) My Bible doesn't come with an index, which would come in handy when trying to untangle the two Lazarus stories, or for that matter the various Simons and Marys. "Common Ground," J. Anthony Lukas's biblical account of Boston's racial politics in the 1960s and 1970s, was published without an index, much to the chagrin of many locals mentioned therein.

There are books no one would dream of reading, but a quick trip through the index would be quite rewarding. The classic example is "The Andy Warhol Diaries" for which both Spy and Fame magazines published pullout indexes in 1989. Spy's is better remembered, perhaps for entries such as these: "Beatty, Warren . . . called disgusting by Jacqueline Onassis for mysterious act in hallway," or "Nureyev, Rudolf . . . awful dancing of."

Read the rest at:
www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/10/21/the_index_embraces_its_silly_side?mode=PF