on being a footnote to history

Footnotes are important. Anthony Grafton, in his book The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard University Press, 1999), offers this:

First, they persuade: they convince the reader that the historian has done an acceptable amount of work, enough to lie within the tolerances of the field.

In two of my books—The Remarkable Life of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: Exile, Redemption, and a Gas Station and The Wit & Wisdom of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: His Millbrook Round Table Columns—I have 384 and 222 footnotes respectively.

Make of that what you will. What I make of it, and recall, is that I did a ton of research—reading, visiting libraries, archives, museums, digging up correspondence, etc.—the required detective work of biography.

Grafton, again:

Second, they indicate the chief sources that the historian has actually used.

In doing my own research, footnotes are often the first place I turn in a book. Some books are meant to be read, some are meant to be used, and in using books footnotes are often the key to discovery.

I thought of all this because I was asked to write a book review for a forthcoming issue of a major Catholic magazine and so received an advance copy of Kindred Spirits: Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, and Zen (Ed Sellner, Monkfish Book Publishing), to be released July 28.

(I’ll post a link when the magazine publishes my review.)

I’ve written a number of essays on Catholic writers of the twentieth century—especially Merton and Kerouac—so I looked forward to reading and reviewing Sellner’s book.

I came to a paragraph where Sellner mentions Merton’s drinking, and I perked up: it’s an aspect of the monk’s life I’ve looked into in great detail and written about—I know something about this.

What does Sellner know? And where did he learn it?

Lo, and behold, there is a footnote. Number 262.

Well, well, well. If you aren’t going to make history, it’s fun to be a footnote to history. Cheers!

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My article, “A Monk’s Habit: Thomas Merton’s Other Affair” can be found here at Crisis Magazine.