Saunter vaguely downwards (to the bottom of the page): my love for footnotes and Good Omens
Saunter vaguely downwards (to the bottom of the page): my love for footnotes and Good Omens
Tianna Morrison
“ Only their names have come down to us. This one was Shakespeare’s earliest play, The Comedie of Robin Hoode, or, The Forest of Sherwoode.*
* The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.”
The mighty footnote is something most of us are familiar with. They haunt the bottom of textbooks. They tuck an author’s relevant anecdote to the bottom of the page.
1
They’re the method of referencing that either had you thanking your lucky stars or cursing everything that led you to that moment in your undergrad degree. Sometimes your opinion would change depending on whether they were included in the final word count of the essay or not.
That’s the footnote we all know best—the sidekick of the nonfiction title, the reference to the work of someone else who probably knows infinitely more about the given topic than you do. I am a lover of this footnote, without a doubt. I’d choose footnotes over in-text referencing any day of the week. However, it would be demeaning to the footnote to assume this was its only function. It doesn’t have to support the body of your work by referencing an outside source that backs up your argument.
2
In fiction, the footnote is—in most cases—used to enrich the text by building upon the main narrative.
The footnote is actually one of my favourite ways of establishing a narrative voice, especially one that is omnipresent. One that is actually narrating the actions of the characters, rather than participating directly in the story. One who has their own thoughts and opinions, and wants to give them to us as they’re telling the story. One who smartly, to avoid cluttering and confusing the main narrative, uses footnotes for these observations. There are innumerable examples of this in fiction, but one of my favourites is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Good Omens was one of the first books I remember reading that used footnotes in this way and it remains one of my favourite examples. I have had numerous conversations that follow this basic outline:
Footnotes? In my novel? Bah!
ME
Have you, by chance, read Good Omens?
PERSON
Of course! I am hardly an animal. (scoffs)
ME
Well, there are some excellent footnotes in that book! What’s your argument for that, my good friend?
And end scene.
3
It defeats the purpose of comedy to look closely at how it works, and I’m not really qualified to try an analysis of it anyway. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are far funnier than I ever will be, and I’m more than happy to accept that. However, in a book filled with jokes upon jokes upon jokes, the footnotes in Good Omens stand out to me. They aren’t common, exactly—there are 66 in a book of 398 pages.
4
There are great stretches of pages between them. Because of this, you never really know when a footnote is going to creep up on you when you’re reading. And then, the symbol appears. It tells you to head to the bottom of the page for something. The brief moment where your eyes drift down the page to the footnote feels like the pause before a punchline. Maybe that’s why I find it so funny, why I tend to laugh out loud at the footnotes more than any other part. Maybe it’s just because it’s a funny book.
Either way, it’s a bloody good footnote.
‘The end justifies the means, thought Aziraphale. And the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. *
* This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.’ (Gaiman & Pratchett, Good Omens, 298)
1
Both so it stops distracting from the main argument, and because it’s probably not as relevant as it should be if it’s being printed.
2
These references are still important. Plagiarism is bad, kids!
3
I would like to state that some artistic liberties were taken here. If you haven’t read Good Omens, you aren’t an animal, of course, but you should absolutely read it and I’d be more than willing to lend you my copy.
4 Yes, I did count. I also lost count halfway through, attempted to Google the answer, and had to start again when I didn’t find an answer, so it’s anyone’s guess. The point still stands.
Gaiman, N & Pratchett, T 2006, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, HarperCollins, New York.