Footnote Manifesto
By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil
When I write a research-intensive article, many wonderful – but off-topic – factoids accumulate. I collect them in the way an elderly woman might gather stray cats to her bosom.*
*My goal is to write an essay that has a footnote-to-body ratio of 20:1. I shall create a network of footnotes, endnotes, after words, epilogues, postscripts and appendices so labyrinthine that it would take a rabbinical student or Halliburton accountant years simply to unravel them. Cliff's Notes will attempt – and fail – to simplify them. Woody Allen will parody them. These footnotes shall be so impressive that the Pulitzer Prize committee will create a new category for them, which, of course, I will win. Although only Harold Bloom will actually read my footnotes, he will demand that they be added to the curriculum of all college English syllabi.
After a Papal Bull denounces my footnotes and a sect of Shi’ites proclaims a fatwa against them, I will be forced into exile. I will be able to seek asylum only in Belize, some of the Canary Islands and Gresham. My story will become a cause célèbre while I become a sex symbol among female students who favor vintage sweaters and designer eyewear. Screen printers will emboss my visage on cheap cotton t-shirts, which they will sell from makeshift booths on college campuses. This will make it very hard for me to go out in public. They – the aforementioned female students – will create blogs demanding my amnesty and will write anonymous letters to their congressmen, signing their name “PS”.
Merriam-Webster will officially recognize the asterisk as the 27th letter. That standup comic who makes all those punctuation sounds with his mouth will finally have some new material. He will make a comeback and we will meet on the Conan O’Brien Show. After ceding to me their right to digress, Umberto Eco, Al Gore and the heirs of Winston Churchill will change careers en masse and take up tap dancing. Typographers will love to hate me. Nicholson Baker will be my official biographer. We will meet on a bench in Central Park and I will dictate my life story to him while eating a bialy. You might find Waldo in my footnotes. In my honor, Quizno’s will create a “Footnote Long Hot Dog” in which the meat will extend three feet beyond the bun.
When I create this magnum opus, my work here at a tiny little division of Hallmark Cards will be done.
