In these exhausting days of toil and strife, when our very lives are ruled by those brutally implacable tyrants Juan
Thing and A.N.Other, I often think it a great pity that novelists never include an index at the back of
their books. This simple addition would make re-reading favorite
passages from their fictional worlds much less time consuming. For instance, in the back of Kafka's
great entomological story 'Metamorphosis' you would be able to easily locate the following popular reference:
Samsa, Gregor: turns into gigantic insect 1-2, 7, 10; sister's reaction to transformation 2, 4-159; etc.
And in Lampedusa's 'The Leopard' we could find this highly readable entry in a heartbeat:
Amphitrite, fountain of: 12, 15, 42, 118-120
Or in the great Norse sagas, swiftly access this awesome index notation:
Slaughtered heroes on battlefield, ravens feeding on flesh of: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,20,22, ad infinitum.
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