Annotated versions of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" come to mind.

A bit like one of my favorite books but not quite so involved.

Here's a link to an example.

i've never seen anything like that annotating before (i'd try to ignore it if i was reading that book, actually), but postmodernist authors played with that kind of thing, and people like David Foster Wallace and many others have taken forms from other media (footnotes, indexing, victorian chapter breaks and headings, emails, etc)

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an old example--it's just a novel made up of letters back and forth--that's been done a lot.


Did you think it worked for the story he was telling?

Holy crap, arse_hat, I forgot all about that Fawcett book, which I read when it came out. I believe I have a first ed hc of that around here someplace, though the cover looks nothing like that. Some other Fawcett books have odd formatting as well--odd that I completely blanked out on him.

smich, thanks, yeah, I've seen annotated texts before but was specifically looking for something done by the author.

amberglow, yeah, it worked for the story, I think. It's actually the reason I bought the book in the first place. Sometimes I found myself ignoring the sidebars just out of regular reading habit but more often than not, I'd have to go back and read them as they indicate changes in time/geography/character.

Also, I have seen the side of the page annotating used to tell stories that illustrate points in the body of text books. I have ripped that off extensively in training texts I have written.

On pv
That is the trade paperback cover dobbs.

dobbs, if you have any of Fawcett's work around I would highly recommend rereading them now. They seem even more on target now than they did when I first read them.

yeah, i'll have to look around. I moved two months ago and had to leave many books behind. In fact, I had had 8 floor to ceiling bookshelves ... and was only able to bring 2. I tried to make a post here on MC to see if anyone wanted the extra shelves & books (for free or cash) but the post never appeared as it was too long (i listed lots of stuff people could come get) and I was in the middle of packing and forgot to check into it not appearing the next day.

I'm sure I had 2 hc editions of Cambodia and 1 trade, none of which looked like that (that cover is hideous). it was one of my fave books to give as a gift in the early 90s. Mine was the Canadian edition. I could be way off base but if you like that book you might also dig Jerry Mander's In the Absence of the Sacred, though it's been 15 years since I've read either so it might not be the best suggestion.

Thanks for the recommendation dobbs. I missed that and it sounds intriguing. Sorry about the move/book loss. That always sucks.

Wow, arse_hat and dobbs, I didn't think anyone else had read that book. (That's what I get for not living in Canada any more.) I'm not at home right now and can't check, but I think my very old, probably first-edition copy has sort of pinkish blobs all over it.

Generation-X by Douglas Coupland has a bunch of wacky pictures and crazy definitions in the gutter. It's not the same, but it's what this reminds me of.

seanyboy, Douglas Coupland is a Canadian from Vancouver as is Brian Fawcett. I wonder if Fawcett had an influence on Coupland? Coupland's work also reminds me of the text books of Donald Palmer.

Oh, duh. I completely misunderstood the question. Must not post when half asleep.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is weird like this. You'll probably have to keep clicking SURPRISE ME! to see what I mean, unless you've read it.

Side notes are a fairly common form of annotation in non-fiction and critical works. Edward Tufte says side notes are the only notes to use. Footnotes are awkward to lay out and endnotes are annoying pageflippery.

I'm going to be using sidenotes with document thumbnails in my forthcoming (next fall?) book.

sciurus, yeah, I've read it (and again, somehow completely forgot the formatting when i wrote this question). That book creeped the hell out of me.

warbaby, I've used foot and endnotes in the past on projects and awkward is the right word--clumsy, even. a friend did some coding for a site for me for this new project and I think the sidenotes work very nicely.

There's a section of Finnegans Wake that has these.

I've got a few books where, rather than have the title or author at the top of each page, there's a brief synopsis of the page contents. Here's one.