Indexes can be fun!

The Essential Art of the Book Indexer

by Robert Fulford

J.G. Ballard's book of short fiction, War Fever, contains a story consisting of nothing but a five-page index. It's all that remains of an autobiography written by a man who disappeared after being tried in secret for revolutionary activity. Though the authorities suppressed his book, the index somehow survived; we readers have to figure out his fate from the list of topics that was supposed to appear at the end of the book.

That curious little narrative falls into a genre that Jorge Luis Borges made his own: fragments of imaginary documents. The Ballard story could have been written only by someone who loves a good index for itself rather than merely as a guide to a book's contents. The nature of that peculiar love, and the pleasures it brings, are subjects of a delightful anthology from the University of Toronto Press, Indexers and Indexes in Fact & Fiction, edited by Hazel K. Bell.

Some indexes are so simple-minded they seem to have been generated by computers, but making a good index is an independent literary craft, practised by freelancers for more than a century. Bell, who has prepared indexes to some 600 books and journals, was the editor for many years of The Indexer, a trade journal, from which she's drawn many of the articles in her collection. She makes her subject both serious and funny. She knows how hard it is to produce a good index and she celebrates the understated comedy that results when an expert indexer meets first-class material.

She lifts from James Boswell's London Journal a piece of F.A. Pottle's index that conveys a Boswellian sexual exploit with admirable economy: "(Louisa), actress -- JB visits; JB's increased feeling for; JB discusses love with; JB anticipates delight with; JB lends two guineas to; JB entreats to be kind; discourages JB; JB declares passion for; makes assignation with JB; consummation with JB interrupted; JB afraid of a rival; JB feels coolness for; JB incredulous at infection from; JB enraged at perfidy of; JB asks his two guineas back."

http://www.robertfulford.com/Indexes.html Click on link to continue