AN UNUSUAL METHOD OF MAKING A BOOK INDEX A SYMPOSIUM Oliver Stallybrass submitted an article with this title. It was considered suitable as a basis for a symposium to which a number of members were invited to contribute. Mr. Stallybrass's article—with an addendum—is printed first. OLIVER STALLYBRASS The first step was to allocate a precise Without having made an exhaustive search section of the alphabet to each recto or right- of the literature, I have the impression that hand page. This I did by counting the num book indexes are almost invariably compiled ber of recto pages for each letter, dividing by means of cards or slips of paper; and that the index of Chambers's encyclopaedia into the use of a thumb-indexed notebook, which the appropriate number of roughly equal is not mentioned in Collison's standard sections for each corresponding letter, and work1, would strike most indexers as heretical, inscribing accordingly the top right-hand indeed as utterly and obviously retrograde. corner of each recto in the notebook—keep Needless to say, this would be true in the ing the captions mutually exclusive but never longer than three initial letters, and ignoring case of any index which was going to remain in that form, while continuing to grow; but the more improbable combinations; thus the as a stepping-stone to a typed, and ultimately nine pages for B were B-Bap, Bar-Baz printed, index the thumb-indexed notebook (ignoring Baq), Bea-Bem, Ben-Bez, Bi-Bl seems to me, after a single experiment in its (there being no references to the Bhagavad- use, to have, for many types of book, over Gita), Bo, Bra-Bri, Bro-Buk and Bul-By. whelming advantages. The index of Chambers's encyclopaedia The book in question, which I indexed for (chosen simply as being the largest in my Seeker & Warburg, was a 270-page translated possession) is not of course tailor-made to biography, by Philippe Jullian, of the fin-de- fit an index consisting largely of French siecle writer, wit, dandy and aesthete Robert names; Painter's Marcel Proust, which de Montesquiou (the original of Proust's shares so many dramatis personal with the Baron de Charlus). The French edition had Montesquiou biography, might have spread no index, but my allowance of ten double- the load a little more evenly from page to column pages, together with my preliminary page. A framework, however, modelled on reading, underlining and annotating, sug a large general index can serve again and gested that a 200-page, 7in. x 4£in., stiff- again—and has indeed already served backed notebook costing 4/3d. would be again for Pasternak's Letters to Georgian adequate; and so it proved. (I would, as it friends—thus reducing the time needed for turned out, have needed about 22/- worth initial preparation from about an hour on of 5in. x 3in. cards.) this occasion to five or ten minutes each subsequent time. In any case, only one For the prime and tremendous advantage recto (Corn-Con) remained virgin; and only of the notebook over the card index is in 10 per cent of the versos were brought sheer mechanical speed of operation, partic into requisition—the indexer's equivalent ularly at the entry stage. Moreover, whereas of those authors' * scriggles' which, in card indexes get more unwieldy the larger E. M. Forster's words, 'surge up from the they grow, notebook entries take progres margin, they extend tentacles, they inter sively less time as more and more headings breed'2—because no more interpolations are written in, and even the need for two were otherwise possible. The need for some seconds' thought on the placing of a head emergency parking ground, as it were, was ing is eliminated. Even with plenty of of course one of the two reasons why I began guide-cards, it takes astonishingly much by using only the recto pages; the other was longer to find the right card, extract it, insert that it is considerably easier, mechanically, a marker (or partly pull out the next card when thumbing to and fro, to have to write to serve the same purpose), write the entry, on rectos only. and wonder perhaps whether to keep the card out for possible further use soon (a Within each recto I divided the space by frequent minor dilemma) before re-filing it guess-work; and whether by luck or good and removing the marker, than it does to management there was nearly always room flick to the page and write the entry, often— where I needed it. In placing each new and one soon learns the short cuts, e.g. that heading I took into account, of course, not Huysmans is one page back from I—almost only the number of further headings likely in one motion. The notebook is also quicker to precede or follow it immediately, but the than the file of cards, for obvious reasons, likely number of entries under any heading. at the typing stage. This placed a higher premium than usual on mental notes made during the reading Other advantages of the notebook are compactness, portability, and the absence of stage—e.g. ' remember Desbordes-Valmore such perils as upsetting the file or—more and Deslandes, close together and each with serious—mislaying cards. These advantages quite a few entries'—and on an ability are particularly important when it comes to (which might surprise my correspondents) the checking of names that one's personal to write small but clearly when the occasion library has failed to unearth, and more than demands. In not one case was it necessary compensate for the danger of jumping a to number a group of misplaced headings heading or two when typing from a note before typing. book; the latter error will come to light when the typing is checked against the To anticipate an obvious question: I re original (at which stage a helper is even sorted to cards for entries under Montesquiou more essential than with cards), whereas a himself and for cognominal members of his card or wodge of cards left in the Reading family, which together accounted for a fifth Room of the British Museum or London of the index. The use of different-coloured Library may well sink without trace. cards, however (red for Montesquiou's rela tives, white for his characteristics, yellow for The notebook method has its limitations, his books), combined with modification of of course, and is clearly better suited to an the one-card-one-heading principle (thus index consisting predominantly of names one white card covered, just as a page in the than to one where headings are more liable notebook might have done, alphabetically- to be changed or combined at a late stage, arranged characteristics from ' intelligence ' where sub-headings and sub-sub-headings to 'pugnacity'), made the finding of headings are going to abound, or where for any and sub-headings on the few (23) cards reason a considerable amount of editing is almost as quick as in the notebook itself. likely to be necessary. (For the next book I indexed, a symposium on Voting in cities Incapable of copying a three-figure number published by Macmillan, it was clear that correctly should be making an index at all. many headings would need to be sub-divided at least once, and so I reverted unhesitatingly Addendum to cards.) In general it has the disadvantages At the proof stage I have a sad little post of inflexibility—which means that the in- script to insert: the publishers of Robert dexer should know what he is doing before de Montesquieu, I have just learned, returned he starts. (One possible way of getting the the press copy of the page proofs without best of both worlds might be to use a loose- waiting for my (punctually delivered) leaf thumb-index notebook; though I guess index—which was accompanied by a list of that the loss of mechanical ease of reference some fifty names given wrongly or in would outweigh the gain in flexibility.) consistently in the text There are thus One fundamental objection to the note numerous discrepancies between the uncor- book method must be anticipated and rected text and the index. This, of course, answered: how, since one cannot shuffle has nothing to do with the subject of my and re-shuffle into page order of first article; but having drawn attention to what unchecked entry, and back into alpha could be mistaken (since not all the names betical order, does one carry out the page- concerned are household words) for a by-page checking of entries against the text thoroughly careless index, I feel constrained which Collison3 takes for granted? At the to add this cautionary tale. risk of scandalising fellow-indexers and scaring off publishers and authors, I will 1 Robert L. Collison, Indexes and indexing, 2nd boldly confess that this incredibly cumber edition, London, Benn, 1959. some (and therefore costly) procedure is one 2 The Library, series 5, vol. 13 (1958), p. 142. that I have always skipped: nobody who is 3 Op. cit, p. 87. From M. D. ANDERSON I have used the notebook method several times for short indexes, and find it satisfac Mr. Stallybrass's method of making an tory, though not perhaps as time-saving as index in a notebook resembles in many ways Mr. Stallybrass would suggest. It would also Dr. Holmstrom's * shingled sheets' method, be applicable to longer indexes involving described in The Indexer, Vol. 2, pp.