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Comment by chipgap98 | Hacker News Reader

Tear/cut it into 3 pieces. The footnotes are one section and then cut the main part of the book in half. Connect the footnotes to the part you are currently reading

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I really wish there were an edition with the footnotes inserted into the main body in some clean way. Like a quarter of the book is in those notes and many plot critical segments are buried back there.

Isn't that the point though? Its not meant to be an easy read. The writing requires a lot of attention in order to absorb its message and the book itself is physically difficult to read. The endnotes are Wallace's way of talking about two things at once.

Also there are multiple endnotes that you read more than once, so I'm not sure putting it in text would work.

Yeah, I get the same feeling.

Some footnotes are chapters in themselves (or have their own footnotes), and I couldn't shake the feeling that the confusion I felt upon realizing that I had still been in 'footnote territory' was entirely intentional, similar to his run-on sentences that have a very specific effect. I rather liked how reading an ebook version made it even easier to forget I was reading footnotes.

Also, one of my favorite jokes wouldn't work if he'd put the footnotes at the bottom of the pages.

This is similar to what I've been planning as a strategy for tackling "The Anatomy of Melancholy," taking it to a bookbinder and splitting it into like 5 or 6 200p volumes.

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