Tandem Reading

So, with the annotations added into the mix, reading this book has become quite a project. But I refuse to give up of course. I’m stubborn like that. Anyway, there is a practical matter to attend to, namely, how exactly to read the novel along side of the references. The author of the annotation book, Don Gifford, states that his book “is thus designed to be laid open beside the novel and to be read in tandem with it.” Tandem reading. Should be interesting.

As I mentioned before, the annotations are quite extensive and numerous (a single sentence usually possesses many, many separate references, piling up on each other like ice floes in a thawing river). Gifford has a suggestion here that bears mentioning. He states that the reader can “accept an interrupted reading and follow it with an uninterrupted reading [of the novel]…read through a sequence of the notes before reading the annotated sequence in the novel…or skim a sequence of notes, then read the annotated sequence in the novel with interruptions for consideration of those notes that seem critical, and then follow with an uninterrupted reading of the sequence in the novel.”

So much work. There better be a prize at the end of this or something.