Wolfgang wrote:

"Conan The Librarian" wrote in message
oups.com...

Please tell me more.

Well, first of all, Bill was right.

Looks like I was wrong about Basbanes. The only mention of Dobie in "A
Gentle Madness" (at least, according to the index) is on page 346, in a
chapter titled "Instant Ivy," wherein Basbanes mentions Dobie as one of
nineteen notable people (including Erle Stanley Gardner, John Foster Dulles
and the Hoblitzelles) for whom rooms in the HRC at Austin are named.

If I'm not mistaken, Dobie is also one of a handful of folks for
whom the HRHRC (not a typo; it was re-named the "Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center" back when I worked at UT in the early eighties) has
created a replica office, complete with original ephemera.

I
won't bore you with the details of what Basbanes has to say about H.H.
Ransom and the HRC......you probably know a great deal more about it than I
do......or than Basbanes, for that matter.

Oh please do. :-) From what I've read about him, it appears that
above all else he was determined to bring immediate academic credibility
(similar to an "instant classic" :-) to the center and the university.
He was ruthless, calculating, driven, eccentric and possibly a bit
mad. In other words, he was the perfect man for the job.

[little snip]

The intriguing and adorable basket-cases who are found rotted or dessicated
under a collapsed stack some two to five years after their last sightings by
the neighbors are given short shrift.

I have nothing to add here, I just wanted to re-read that phrase
again. :-)

(Bill, are you paying attention?)

That said, he somehow manages to botch the one REALLY scandalous case he
deals with in detail......the notorious case of Stephen Blumberg. I'm going
to guess this name is already familiar to you, in which case I don't need to
elucidate. If not, I won't spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say that the
interjection of Blumberg's story in this volume is something akin to jamming
a bit of Stravinsky into Mozart......or vice-versa. I don't know what
Basbanes was thinking......and I suspect he doesn't either.

How does he botch the Blumberg case? I would think that's one case
that is pretty open and shut (so to speak).

{**} If you love footnotes.....or hate them.....(it's one or the
other.....or you are no real bibliophile), you might want to have a look at,
"The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes* Chuck Zerby, Invisible Cities
Press, 2002.

Thanks for the citation. And as to your previous point: There is
another option. You can love *and* hate them. I love them for what
they contain, but I hate them because I can't resist being immediately
drawn to their content; I always jump directly to the footnote.

*"Being a concise and definitive account of the footnote, from its murky
birth to its fertile middle years to its endangered present, beset as it is
by careless writers and indifferent editors and thoughtless readers and
penny-pinching publishers, an account, moreover, enhanced by copious
documentation, enlightened by countless quotations from wise councilors,
lightened by many passages of delightful humor, and yet entirely unafraid of
either controversy or sex." [this footnote appears on the front of the dust
jacket]

I *must* read that book, thanks.

{***} EVERY book should have an index! "Winnie the Pooh" should have an
index.....fukkin' phone books and dictionaries should have indexes!

p.s. Bill was right.

I already knew that. :-)


Chuck Vance