30 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
title: 'Indexing Bleg'
|
||
date: '2006-02-16T14:33:00-05:00'
|
||
permalink: /indexing-bleg/
|
||
tags:
|
||
- publishing
|
||
- research
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
I need help with a bit of phrasing, index-wise. A bit of necessary background: at one point in the book, I discuss at length the various pronouncements of the death of the novel. These are indexed as:
|
||
|
||
> death of the novel, pronouncements
|
||
|
||
Where I discuss the *purposes* that such pronouncements serve (the key turn in my argument), I’ve indexed them as:
|
||
|
||
> death of the novel, pronouncements, function of
|
||
|
||
Various things that are blamed in such pronouncements for having killed off the novel are indexed as:
|
||
|
||
> death of the novel, causes
|
||
|
||
Now I need to index my discussion of John Barth’s claim, in “The Literature of Exhaustion,” that “Whether historically the novel expires or persists seems immaterial to me; if enough writers and critics *feel* apocalyptical about it, their feeling becomes a considerable cultural fact…” How would you characterize that? What’s coming to mind is
|
||
|
||
> death of the novel, irrelevance of
|
||
|
||
but that’s not exactly right. “Immateriality of” also totally misses the mark. What the discussion focuses on is the fact that, for Barth, at least, the *actual* death of the novel is less important than the *sense* that the novel has died; “irrelevance of” makes it sound like the imagined death wouldn’t matter, either. “Actual irrelevance of”? “Irrelevance of reality of”? “Imaginary importance of”? “Feeling as creator of”?
|
||
|
||
Ack! Help, expression of the need for!
|
||
|