8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious, July 7, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities (Hardcover)
In these postmodern times, a book about footnotes, indexes, acknowledgments, and so forth - was bound to be written. We should be grateful that such a book was written by Kevin Jackson. This book is hilarious, and should find an audience amongst graduate students, and more generally, bibliophiles. Jackson's book is a study (the better word is `celebration') of `paratexts', those matters which are an essential part of any book - footnotes, epigraphs, stage directions, indexes, and so forth.
One can only hint at the humour in this book.
For instance, in his chapter on pseudonyms, he discusses the reasons why Eric Blair decided to adopt the pseudonym "George Orwell", noting rather snidely in a footnote: "A cynic might add that `Blair' is an unlikely name for a socialist."
Or when discussing the merits of the last words of James Joyce in his famous short story, "The Dead," Jackson comments: "Lovely prose, Jimmy, simply lovely; not a dry eye in the parlour the last time I read it out to the servants."
Or his chapter on marginalia, which is about those awful scribblings on books made by readers. Jackson adds his own marginalia to his work - the underlining of the word `penis', with the comment "smut!"; or the bracketing of a paragraph with "come, now....", "typical", "Has this man never heard of Derrida?" and my favourite, "bamba, BAMBA!" Just the right touch of pomposity.
His chapter on indexes is classic. He quotes from Joe Queenan's book, If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must be in Trouble:
Tesh, John
Likened to Adolf Hitler, 78
Obliviousness of, 76
Questionable goatee of, 78
This is funny, but at the same time it makes you realise how important indexes really are - and how much fun they can be. I have Queenan's book, but never even bothered to look at the index.
Sometimes, however, Jackson's trickery falls flat, like his chapter "Follies", which is devoted to literary experimentation. The beginning of each paragraph in this piece corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. I was only vaguely curious to see how one could begin a sentence with X and Z. For me, the form under which this particular essay was written detracted from what Jackson was saying (Actually, I felt that way about the chapter on marginalia a bit. The marginalia was so prominent - like all good marginalia! - that it was hard to concentrate on the actual text). Neither was his discussion on literary experimentation particularly interesting, and George Perec's famous book, written without the letter "e", is given more thought by Jackson's colleague, Gilbert Adair.
Still, overall, great...
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Esoteric, yet entertaining and informative, October 22, 2001
This review is from: Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities (Hardcover)
You have to love books and the history of how and why they are the way they are organizationally and physically to enjoy this book. Subtitled "A Guide to Literary Curiosities," Kevin Jackson brings us deep into the world of book parts and how they came to be.
From introductions to prefaces, from pseudonyms to heteronyms, the author embellishes the book with the history that makes them what they are and uses many examples to illustrate his ideas. He describes the origins and uses of blurbs, dedications, epigraphs, and footnotes (which borrows heavily from Anthony Grafton's The Footnote: A Curious History).
Jackson looks at marginalia and stage directions, lectures and last words as used in books. Finally, he addresses the back matter of books: appendixes, bibliographies, and indexes.
This is excellent reading for the historically inclined and for bibliophiles.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Curiosities of the Other in Literature, December 24, 2008
This review is from: Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities (Hardcover)
"Curiouser and curiouser", said Alice and that was my initial response to this unique book. Written by Kevin Jackson, a writer and traveler and somewhat of a mystery, Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities is a book about books. It is specifically about the 'other', the 'invisible' forms or parts of almost every book that are there "in plain sight"; ignored or assumed away when considering the book, but not by Kevin Jackson. He discusses dedications, titles, epigraphs, footnotes, prefaces, afterwords, indexes and even the imaginary: imaginary books and authors. Marginalia is not left out in this delightful compendium of useful and whimsical knowledge and trivia. The epigraphs for the book are worth considering:
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books. (George Santayana, Realms of Being)
Some of the means I use are trivial - and some are quadrivial. (James Joyce, responding to accusations of triviality)
The contents of Invisible Forms exist in that realm somewhere between the trivial and the whole world. It is an interesting place, one that invites the reader in for a dip now and then. Watch out that you are not engulfed by the world of Invisible Forms.
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