
Bartleby, the Scrivener: An interactive, annotated story of Wall Street - samclemens
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/10/herman_melville_s_bartleby_the_scrivener_an_interactive_annotated_text.html
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scandox
I read this in 1995 in a freezing cold bedroom lying atop a pale pink
candlewick bedspread with the dismal damp Irish night wind howling outside.
Pages from Benito Cereno were falling periodically out from the thirty year
old penguin paperback. I was on a very mild acid trip (first and last). It was
wonderful.

Reading it on a screen with these dull minded annotations? I'd hate for this
to be anyone's first experience of it...

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gravity13
> dull minded annotations

Is scandox making an assertion here? Could be, or perhaps it's a just a meager
judgement. Whether or not he/she really thinks this is a pleasant first
experience is open to question.

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scandox
To clarify: the annotations are grand really but I don't find notes, footnotes
and introductions good companions to literature. They break the flow of one's
reading. They should be kept strictly at the back and not intrude on the text.
Reading a story like this is personal and immersive...this text breaks that
down.

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rm_-rf_slash
I agree. Reading is a linear process, and any attempt to insert annotations or
footnotes should be as integrated with the material as any other part of the
story.

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gglitch
I wish reading were a more linear process for me. Explicitly annotated or not,
the better I find a work, the more uncontrollably my thoughts proliferate as I
read, and I'm consequently having to re-read and re-read particularly thought-
inducing paragraphs. There's obviously a material difference between
authors/editors inserting their own thoughts and me inserting my own, but
either way, the better the text, the less linear it is.

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liamconnell
I'm with you. I think that maybe we take in media passively so often these
days (movies, music, radio) that when left to our own devices our mind get a
little too excited.

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ablation
Interesting piece. But did anyone else find the website screwed with their
scrolling along the x axis?

