INDEX

Although most books of non fiction cannot be usefully read without the amenities of a more general index, the index is not normally self-generating. Thus, in terms of the formats of non-fiction, one is meant to see the back of the book, and in terms of composition, or entries, a series, and in terms of locations, see pointers. As Gertrude Stein recognized in Tender Buttons, which constitutes the first literary work of non-fiction to function like a blind index or (colorless) idea that has been typographically reset, the Index is a poetical text and a fictional text it sits next to, like a caption in reverse, or a dining room table adjacent to an idea of sexuality, or the temperature of the room in which someone else’s writing took place. An Index is always an Index of meaningful moments or some other impertinence. And nothing is less impertinent than irrelevance. Thus, in a digital environment like the one you or I are in, cross-references and various incidentals are in themselves indexical, like posters about love or passion, and are embedded in a text like an arrow that, pointing to one’s own heart, misses its clear mark and comes to rest in a row of say, “flowers, delphiniums, how to grow them.” Unlike the manual typewriters once used to code index cards, today the Index highlights the less than visible things beyond the book, including obscure persons and degrees, confusing names, Wade-Giles transcriptions, perfume, and other forms of non-printed materials.