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The Devil's Details: A History of the Footnote
This surprising history of the footnote starts with the assumption that footnotes are not solely the province of academics and bibliophiles. On the contrary, this book argues that footnotes can enchant and inform readers through tributes to people, characters, heroes, and lovers. Scholars have employed them, of course, but so have poets, novelists, memorialists, and pornographers. Written with clarity and erudition, this book presents the history of the first genuine footnote—an annotation in a 17th-century poem by England’s first female poet—and other fascinating footnote tales, such as the discovery of a multivolume book that uses one entire volume for a single footnote and the use of footnotes to footnotes. This history pays tribute to the joy of reading footnotes and makes a compelling case that they are too important, too interesting, and too entertaining to be left to scholars.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 3, 2016
This book does for footnotes what Lynne Truss did for punctuation, what John Pollack did for puns, and what Simon Garfield did for fonts. It explores the genesis, history, various roles and somewhat uncertain future of the lowly yet unconquerable footnote.
Zerby adopts a chatty yet somewhat curmudgeonly tone which is perfect for the topic. His prose is laced with erudition, memorable anecdotes, enthusiasm, humor--and yes, lots and lots of footnotes.
He asks questions such as: What are the different uses which have been made of the footnote? Why are some notes relegated to the back of the book? Why are footnotes looked down on in poetry, whereas they may be used in prose? Will the footnote survive the onslaught of the Internet?
The mistrust of the Internet strikes this reviewer as somewhat dated.* And yet... the author's concerns about the fluidity, impermanence and superficial uses of cyberspace are somehow still relevant.
*Keep in mind that this was first published in 2001. (You didn't think I was going to review a book on footnotes without making one of my own, did you?)
Zerby adopts a chatty yet somewhat curmudgeonly tone which is perfect for the topic. His prose is laced with erudition, memorable anecdotes, enthusiasm, humor--and yes, lots and lots of footnotes.
He asks questions such as: What are the different uses which have been made of the footnote? Why are some notes relegated to the back of the book? Why are footnotes looked down on in poetry, whereas they may be used in prose? Will the footnote survive the onslaught of the Internet?
The mistrust of the Internet strikes this reviewer as somewhat dated.* And yet... the author's concerns about the fluidity, impermanence and superficial uses of cyberspace are somehow still relevant.
*Keep in mind that this was first published in 2001. (You didn't think I was going to review a book on footnotes without making one of my own, did you?)
October 3, 2014
I probably ought only give this 3 stars but, c'mon, it is about footnotes! Makes a good counterpoint to Grafton, and makes good use of Grafton although disagreeing with him frequently. The style used, at least in a few of his sentences, makes understanding what he is saying complicated. Said sentences are "pretty" but not clear.
Anyway, if you are interested in footnotes, their varied uses (e.g., poetry), and their history then you ought to read this. But I recommend reading Anthony Grafton first if you haven't already. It isn't necessary but Zerby's "dialogue" with Grafton may just convince you to read him so you may s well do it first. Then again, if you only intend to read one book on footnotes and you prefer it more varied and a bit more wittier then read this one.
Anyway, if you are interested in footnotes, their varied uses (e.g., poetry), and their history then you ought to read this. But I recommend reading Anthony Grafton first if you haven't already. It isn't necessary but Zerby's "dialogue" with Grafton may just convince you to read him so you may s well do it first. Then again, if you only intend to read one book on footnotes and you prefer it more varied and a bit more wittier then read this one.
August 27, 2011
Here's the thing. This isn't a book--it's a well-concealed rant about how freaking awesome footnotes are. I have a friend who has a fifteen-minute long speech about how useless and ultimately evil the semi-colon is (I recommend not raising the subject after a few beers, and yes, I speak from experience), and this book is the snarky print version of that rant, except it involves asterisks instead of other, unmentionable forms of punctuation and is a rant of praise, not disgust. Zerby is one smack-talking footnote lover when you get him on the topic of those who view the footnote and its function differently than he does--he often talks this smack in a footnote, actually--and for a good while that put me off. I dislike books that revolve around trying to prove a point that I don't feel ardently enough about to argue. Here, though, I eventually realized what was happening (i.e. Zerby is a barely closeted wiseass and opinionated as hell) and from there on I had a great time. Giggling-on-the-train great, and all about subtle points of contention regarding footnote placement or whatever.
But beyond that, I'm not sure what to say about this book, really; it took me forever to read (given that it's only 150 pages--sheesh!), and it took me a long time to catch onto why I was struggling with it, but in the end it was a hell of a lot of fun. The history is sort of scattered, except for a few linear chapters on the three modern-ish fathers of the footnote, but interesting enough to keep me chugging along. Uneven, but ultimately a good time.
But beyond that, I'm not sure what to say about this book, really; it took me forever to read (given that it's only 150 pages--sheesh!), and it took me a long time to catch onto why I was struggling with it, but in the end it was a hell of a lot of fun. The history is sort of scattered, except for a few linear chapters on the three modern-ish fathers of the footnote, but interesting enough to keep me chugging along. Uneven, but ultimately a good time.
May 17, 2007
The Devil's Details is a disarmingly charming, delightfully didactic, advocatory manifesto at the heart of which lies a simple tenet: annotation, whether academic or literary, should do more than merely provide exegesis; at its best and most artful, it should serve to elevate a text. Zerby tracks the history of the footnote, from its earliest known practitioner, Richard Jugge, to contemporary users, taking to task along the way those who, in his estimation, have undermined, ridiculed, misused, or unfortunately influenced the attributive device (stingy publishers and charlatan scholars in general and Alexander Pope. Jonathan Swift, and John Updike in particular, whom he eviscerates). This is a fun book. Most people would rather chop off their own foot rather than read a book about footnotes, but Chuck Zerby and I are decidedly not among them. (And, alas, Chuck Zerby is no longer among us, having passed away in 2004 at far too young an age.)
May 15, 2012
I'm not sure if Zerby's digressions are ironic--the ones having nothing to do with footnotes, that is. An example is when he wanders off into the daydreams of a young girl working in an early print shop. I don't see the point of them and the irony doesn't work in this case--his irony in others does. It is a bit more of a straightforward history of the footnote than is Grafton's but I still say that there is room for a plain and perhaps even pedantic narrative about the life of the footnote.
August 23, 2017
I had a hard time remaining engaged by The Devil's Details, though another non-fiction book (about a rather dry topic, but "told with flair,") such as
Civilization and the Limpet
kept me spellbound.
The author kept trying to build bridges between history and pop culture, and make the inaccessible less so. I wanted to give him points for that. I suppose I did, because my rating indicates "it was ok" according to the GoodReads star system, but I found most of his attempts to be forced, and not very compelling*.
An example, from page 20 (in speaking about Martin Luther):
"In etchings and woodcuts the pope became a three-headed beast, a seven-headed beast, a demon, the Anti-Christi; Luther became a cook brewing up lies, heresy, unchastity. He morphed into a two-headed fool, a seven-headed monster, a winesack. The spirit of Beavis and Butthead was afoot."
Another example, from the footnotes on page 22:
"One may suspect that Henry the Eighth might not have been sincere in his quest for orderliness -- just as one may suspect Jerry Springer is not always unhappy when his guests raise their voices or their fists."
On the back of the book, it says "Chuck Zerby developed The Devil's Details from an article he published in The New York Times." I haven't read that article, but I feel like I would have enjoyed a shorter version of the history with less of the gratuitous references and over-explaning.
* There were a few times, however, that I found Zerby's attempts amusing/well written. An example, from page 94: "To move from terror to poetry in the space of a few paragraphs is a splendid sleight of hand; it should be done center stage, not backstage. Nothing makes clearer that the historian's facts are melted by interpretation on the skillet of the writer's temperament." (And since I don't know how best to create a footnote within a footnote, I'll just describe it -- after the word "backstage" in the quote above, there is an asterisk, which leads to footnote discussing the writing of Leopold von Ranke. The beginning of the footnote says "A single citation could have been inserted at the end of this paragraph; some writers, pulling Ranke, would have done just that." Pulling Ranke ! That was a good one! I enjoyed that!
The author kept trying to build bridges between history and pop culture, and make the inaccessible less so. I wanted to give him points for that. I suppose I did, because my rating indicates "it was ok" according to the GoodReads star system, but I found most of his attempts to be forced, and not very compelling*.
An example, from page 20 (in speaking about Martin Luther):
"In etchings and woodcuts the pope became a three-headed beast, a seven-headed beast, a demon, the Anti-Christi; Luther became a cook brewing up lies, heresy, unchastity. He morphed into a two-headed fool, a seven-headed monster, a winesack. The spirit of Beavis and Butthead was afoot."
Another example, from the footnotes on page 22:
"One may suspect that Henry the Eighth might not have been sincere in his quest for orderliness -- just as one may suspect Jerry Springer is not always unhappy when his guests raise their voices or their fists."
On the back of the book, it says "Chuck Zerby developed The Devil's Details from an article he published in The New York Times." I haven't read that article, but I feel like I would have enjoyed a shorter version of the history with less of the gratuitous references and over-explaning.
* There were a few times, however, that I found Zerby's attempts amusing/well written. An example, from page 94: "To move from terror to poetry in the space of a few paragraphs is a splendid sleight of hand; it should be done center stage, not backstage. Nothing makes clearer that the historian's facts are melted by interpretation on the skillet of the writer's temperament." (And since I don't know how best to create a footnote within a footnote, I'll just describe it -- after the word "backstage" in the quote above, there is an asterisk, which leads to footnote discussing the writing of Leopold von Ranke. The beginning of the footnote says "A single citation could have been inserted at the end of this paragraph; some writers, pulling Ranke, would have done just that." Pulling Ranke ! That was a good one! I enjoyed that!
June 15, 2008
What might seem like a drab and dull popular history of footnotes is actually an interesting, enlightening and encouraging book written for all those who hold the footnote dear to their hearts. I being one of those who love a good footnote appreciated this charming history of its development and the author's brazen cry for its survival in the future of fiction, poetry, and of course, scholarly writing.
July 5, 2022
The Devil’s Details by Chuck Zerby was the most entertaining of the books about the features of books I have read this month, though it’s probably the scantiest in information. Zerby is a partisan in favour of footnotes and he charts and celebrates their use while going off on various entertaining tangents.
It makes sense the book frequently digresses, as the author sees the pleasure and purpose of footnotes to be a pleasing interruption to a text. He gives a number of examples, including one where a heavy philosophical subject is enlivened by a metaphor in a footnote, he also talks about a man called Marcus who was stung to death by bees. Such a book looks pretty peculiar in my notes, there’s a cluster of stuff about a man called Bentley, who showed up in a satirical index war in Dennis Duncan’s Index, a history of the, in my notes Bentley is calling a colleague ‘an old shoe’ and shooting bullets into the study of another - I’m not sure if he was a big player in the actual footnote story though or just a source of funny stories in another footnote. (Another figure in both the index and footnote books is Norman Mailer, who is the victim of an index-based prank in one book and feeds a horse vodka in this one).
A large part of the book dramatises the invention of the first footnote, which is found in The Book of Job in the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, though he says (in a footnote) that he’ll give a slap-up meal to anyone who finds an earlier one, and include them in a footnote in a new edition. When I say it dramatises the invention, it goes whole hog. Zerby has read one book about criminal life in Elizabethan London and a few about printer’s houses and goes full reconstruction - then it includes a footnote to explain how some historical writers hate all the dramatising stuff but it’s his book and he wanted to do it. Essentially, footnotes weren’t useful in days of marginalia but now they’re a tidy way of adding extra details.
He talks about three heroes of the footnote; Bayle, who uses them as an ‘underworld’ to place the really interesting stuff, Gibbon, who made footnotes respectable but still digressive and Ranke, who made them boring citations and little more.
This author is very opinionated about his footnotes. They should add to the text, put different spins on it and give authority - they aren’t merely for citations. Even poems can be improved with them, as Aphra Behn did, using a footnote to contextualise a religious seeming poem into one about syphilis. Alexander Pope, however, used his footnotes wrong, using them to browbeat the text and make footnotes look bad.
He is very passionate.
Don’t even get him started on modern publishing’s preference for endnotes.
In some ways this book reminded me of the ‘angry x reviewer’ characters on youtube a few years ago, an exaggerated take on the real writer and his fondness for footnotes, though maybe he is really like this. Who knows? I had a blast though.
It makes sense the book frequently digresses, as the author sees the pleasure and purpose of footnotes to be a pleasing interruption to a text. He gives a number of examples, including one where a heavy philosophical subject is enlivened by a metaphor in a footnote, he also talks about a man called Marcus who was stung to death by bees. Such a book looks pretty peculiar in my notes, there’s a cluster of stuff about a man called Bentley, who showed up in a satirical index war in Dennis Duncan’s Index, a history of the, in my notes Bentley is calling a colleague ‘an old shoe’ and shooting bullets into the study of another - I’m not sure if he was a big player in the actual footnote story though or just a source of funny stories in another footnote. (Another figure in both the index and footnote books is Norman Mailer, who is the victim of an index-based prank in one book and feeds a horse vodka in this one).
A large part of the book dramatises the invention of the first footnote, which is found in The Book of Job in the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, though he says (in a footnote) that he’ll give a slap-up meal to anyone who finds an earlier one, and include them in a footnote in a new edition. When I say it dramatises the invention, it goes whole hog. Zerby has read one book about criminal life in Elizabethan London and a few about printer’s houses and goes full reconstruction - then it includes a footnote to explain how some historical writers hate all the dramatising stuff but it’s his book and he wanted to do it. Essentially, footnotes weren’t useful in days of marginalia but now they’re a tidy way of adding extra details.
He talks about three heroes of the footnote; Bayle, who uses them as an ‘underworld’ to place the really interesting stuff, Gibbon, who made footnotes respectable but still digressive and Ranke, who made them boring citations and little more.
This author is very opinionated about his footnotes. They should add to the text, put different spins on it and give authority - they aren’t merely for citations. Even poems can be improved with them, as Aphra Behn did, using a footnote to contextualise a religious seeming poem into one about syphilis. Alexander Pope, however, used his footnotes wrong, using them to browbeat the text and make footnotes look bad.
He is very passionate.
Don’t even get him started on modern publishing’s preference for endnotes.
In some ways this book reminded me of the ‘angry x reviewer’ characters on youtube a few years ago, an exaggerated take on the real writer and his fondness for footnotes, though maybe he is really like this. Who knows? I had a blast though.
September 3, 2017
Most books one finishes are tolerable. A few are very good, and a very few are so bad that one has to read right through to the end out of masochism or perhaps a sense of duty.
I finished this one because it's so damn alien.
Let's get the misleading title out of the way: this isn't a history, it's a polemic about the (allegedly) endangered footnote, and a call to arms to save it, as written by a Martian or perhaps some even more distant (literally and/or metaphorically) extraterrestrial. This is a book where entire chapters will have you wondering what the hell the author is driving at, and lengthy quotations from the Western canon are misinterpreted to the point where one wonders if the author is even a carbon-based life form, never mind a homo sapiens. Which makes the reactionary kids-these-days posturing that much weirder.
If you've ever wondered what Klingon critics posing as human schoolmarms might make of Earthling literature, give this book a shot.
I finished this one because it's so damn alien.
Let's get the misleading title out of the way: this isn't a history, it's a polemic about the (allegedly) endangered footnote, and a call to arms to save it, as written by a Martian or perhaps some even more distant (literally and/or metaphorically) extraterrestrial. This is a book where entire chapters will have you wondering what the hell the author is driving at, and lengthy quotations from the Western canon are misinterpreted to the point where one wonders if the author is even a carbon-based life form, never mind a homo sapiens. Which makes the reactionary kids-these-days posturing that much weirder.
If you've ever wondered what Klingon critics posing as human schoolmarms might make of Earthling literature, give this book a shot.
December 6, 2019
Mostly infuriating. Could have been delightful but most of the interesting parts overshadowed by seriously overwrought prose, overstated points, speculation, and careless editing. Re: editing, references to “Jean-Luc Goddard” (Godard), “Haley’s Comet” (Halley’s), and “antidotes” (anecdotes) are understandable and forgivable, but not when the very first footnote in a book adulating footnotes is both incorrect and in support of a demonstrably false (but dramatic!) proposition. Pedantry aside, some good bits but a very high eyeroll-page ratio.
September 15, 2021
Honestly, felt like I was reading a short summary of a better, more scholarly and in-depth book.
And in the middle I realized I don't want to read a history of footnotes at all, I want to read a history of commentary. Still a pretty ok book, and a quick read. Tbh I'd suggest maybe reading the other Footnote History book by Anthony w/e his last name is. I might read it too.
Lots of anecdotes about people and authors. Made me want to read a biography of Alexander Pope.
And in the middle I realized I don't want to read a history of footnotes at all, I want to read a history of commentary. Still a pretty ok book, and a quick read. Tbh I'd suggest maybe reading the other Footnote History book by Anthony w/e his last name is. I might read it too.
Lots of anecdotes about people and authors. Made me want to read a biography of Alexander Pope.
March 8, 2023
We'll forgive a history of footnotes for being erudite, pedantic, and circumlocutory. This book is in itself a long and rich footnote to the history of a dear and dying cultural artifact, whose trajectory parallels that of knowledge: The encyclopedia has now birthed smithereens.
July 13, 2023
Hoping for a cultural history this fell far short although it tells when started. Personally I see it similar to the evolution of alchemy to chemistry but this book barely scratches the surface at best meh.
June 2, 2015
A super-fun and, in many ways, super-cute book. Zerby is quite the unabashed fan of the footnote, and it's fun to hear him rail against the footnote-haters. Definitely a fun book for any footnote-lover.
May 7, 2014
Amusing and chatty. I wasn't always sure whether the author was missing someone else's joke or was incredibly dry himself—he treated some critiques of footnotes that appeared to me to be satirical as if they were in earnest. Or was that his joke?
November 18, 2015
This investigation into footnotes could have--so easily--become dull and dry. Zerby's prose and interruptions made it into a sort of treasure hunt, wherein the prize could be humor, trivia, subtle controversy, an anecdote, or a combination of two or more.
August 28, 2017
Precious. . .
I was looking for a history of footnote use and this book is far to erudite and literary to fill that function. The focus is on the few, mainly literary subjects. I guess the history of footnotes has yet to be written.
I was looking for a history of footnote use and this book is far to erudite and literary to fill that function. The focus is on the few, mainly literary subjects. I guess the history of footnotes has yet to be written.
October 29, 2007
A very good book but it receives three stars because I really do believe Anthony Grafton's book offered more. But that's only my opinion.
August 25, 2009
Sure, a book about the history of footnotes sounds like a snooze fest, but really! It's very enjoyable! With a lot of footnotes.
June 2, 2010
Quite and interesting book
December 16, 2010
I've always loved footnotes!
March 15, 2013
Who knew a book on footnotes could be so interesting!
April 27, 2012
More intersting than the other book on the subject, but not quite as expansive.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews