j d worthington
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- Joined
- May 9, 2006
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- 13,889
The latest addition to my reading (interspersed with other things) is not fiction, but the biography brought to my attention by Southern Geologist (for which, my thanks): William H. Patterson, Jr.'s Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, vol. 1: Learning Curve (1907-1948).
I've only gotten a few chapters into it, but already I see a couple of things which rather bother me. One is the peculiar way in which the notes are done. Not that they aren't informative and specific (whereas de Camp's bio of Lovecraft, when it came to the notes, was often confusing as the dickens), but rather the fact that they don't follow anything approaching standard procedure; rather than using standard notation such as "ibid", or "see note ##" for identical entries which follow one another, it repeats the entire thing... which is rather a waste of space and overly redundant. This is a minor thing, however.
On the other hand, the lack of a bibliography for a biography which covers such a wide range of topics (giving a rather full societal background for RAH), is frustrating, to say the least. Not to mention that it would have been tremendously helpful to any future Heinlein scholars; especially if Patterson had noted, for example, which specific works by someone had influenced Heinlein (where known), rather than simply saying this or that person had such an influence.
On this last, I am thinking in particular of two he shared with HPL: John Fiske and Will Durant. Given that Durant, at least, has quite a bibliography to his (and Ariel's) credit, listing specific works would save a tremendous amount of time for anyone doing such research.
On the whole, though, I am finding it to be a fascinating read which flows very well indeed. I simply wish that he had included the above, which would have made it even more informative and useful....
I've only gotten a few chapters into it, but already I see a couple of things which rather bother me. One is the peculiar way in which the notes are done. Not that they aren't informative and specific (whereas de Camp's bio of Lovecraft, when it came to the notes, was often confusing as the dickens), but rather the fact that they don't follow anything approaching standard procedure; rather than using standard notation such as "ibid", or "see note ##" for identical entries which follow one another, it repeats the entire thing... which is rather a waste of space and overly redundant. This is a minor thing, however.
On the other hand, the lack of a bibliography for a biography which covers such a wide range of topics (giving a rather full societal background for RAH), is frustrating, to say the least. Not to mention that it would have been tremendously helpful to any future Heinlein scholars; especially if Patterson had noted, for example, which specific works by someone had influenced Heinlein (where known), rather than simply saying this or that person had such an influence.
On this last, I am thinking in particular of two he shared with HPL: John Fiske and Will Durant. Given that Durant, at least, has quite a bibliography to his (and Ariel's) credit, listing specific works would save a tremendous amount of time for anyone doing such research.
On the whole, though, I am finding it to be a fascinating read which flows very well indeed. I simply wish that he had included the above, which would have made it even more informative and useful....
That said, I didn't take the scholarly approach that you did when reading it, so I didn't notice the problem with the notes, but that is an issue, in particular your point about future scholars not getting as much use out of it as they could.
