To my delight I found that McKittrick’s book is thoroughly footnoted, not only in a standard bibliographical way, though some of that, but in a digressive, contrapuntal, sub-argumentative way. By which I mean, quick glance here, it appears as though some of these footnotes are miniature essays, essayettes, which I’m sure complicate, deepen, twist up, who knows, the text. Occasionally these footnotes are a whole page or more. It might be the poet in me, by which I mean the writer obsessed with form in me, who is so interested in and enamored of the oddball overlong footnote, the footnote that calls into question the very idea of the ancillary, just as Jenny Boully’s book The Body, made entirely of footnotes, does. I’m pretty sure the first time I realized I loved footnotes was Junot Dìaz’s book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, where the author pokes his head through the curtains of the novel to give crucial lessons on the history of the Dominican Republic, etc. I was finishing a PhD, which some people call a PhDuh, and was relieved—thrilled really—to see someone making playful use of what is usually a toneless, utilitarian, citational requirement of the form (bad writing). I have lately been writing long footnotes myself—way too long, believe me—in an effort, I realized as they were accruing, to do that thing we do in conversation, which is interrupt ourselves, or interject—oh yeah hold up you need to know this, too—such that, in the best conversations, the ones I love, visiting is the word, you sometimes go as deep as you do far. Another poetic preoccupation, perhaps. Another definition of the lyric, perhaps. That’s my two cents anyway.[1]
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