"Index, A History of the" by Dennis Duncan had me laughing out loud!

 I don't remember what compelled me to pick up and buy this book but I'm glad I did. Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan had me laughing out loud earlier today.  If you're wondering what on Earth could be amusing much less hilarious about a book about the history of indexing (and page numbers, a relatively modern development that made indexes possible), I encourage you to read the book yourself. 

Nonfiction books didn't have indexes until sometime in the 17th century, and even then, most didn't. (Why novels don't have indexes, I'll never understand, but they sure could use them, especially long Russian novels spanning generations with characters that can be referred to by one of three names!)  When indexes first appeared, many people looked at them with disdain and horror. What would prevent someone from going directly to the index, reading only what was needed or wanted, and skipping everything else? Wasn't that a form of intellectual laziness, even theft, that might make us all dumber? The same sorts of questions asked when Ask Jeeves then Yahoo! and Google appeared: why would anyone read anything when it could be looked up instantly by anyone? 

Obviously, people still read books and by some measures, we read more than we ever did; we are probably better readers because we can instantly get a one-sentence summary of a historical figure or place mentioned in a book or - better yet - learn the pronunciation and definition of a strange word we've never encountered before. 

But hostility to the index was so fierce that its enemies weaponized it, adding unauthorized indexes to books written by people they wanted to ridicule. 

I will spare you the details of the pissing contest between Charles Boyle and Richard Bentley (but they are amusing). Suffice it to say that when Boyle's supporters wanted to ridicule Bentley, they inserted an index into a book, allowing users to turn to a specific page to know instantly about such important Bentley flaws as, 

His egregious dulness, p. 74, 106, 119, 135, 136 ... 

His Pedantry, from p. 93 to 99, 144, 216

His Appeal to Foreigners, p. 13, 14, 15

His familiar acquaintance with Books that he never saw, p. 76, 98, 115, 232. 

According to the author (of the Index, A History of the), if you turn to each of these page numbers, you really would find descriptions of such things. 

The mock index was most effectively weaponized against a man named William Bromley, who wrote as a young man a book about his Grand Tour of France and Italy, something so clichéd at the time (because everyone was doing it) that he wrote it anonymously, stating only that it was written by "A Person of Quality." 

Fast forward 13 years when Bromley was running for office. 3 days before the election, a second edition of this terrible book appeared, this time with an index. 

And what an index! Its entries were used to highlight idiocies and tautologies in the text that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. 

Naples, the Capital City of the Kingdom of Naples, p. 195. 

Carpioni a Fish in the Lake di Guarda, by the Similitude of the Fish and of the Name, the Author much questions if they are not the same with our Carps, p. 50. 

He lost the election; ridicule inspired by the index pointing readers to his imperfect text no doubt played a decisive role. 

Tory satirists used the same weapon against a Whig opponent Joseph Addison, issuing an edition of his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy with the same caustically-spirited index with entries such as, 

Uncultivated Plants rise naturally about Cassis. (Where do they not?), 1

Same us'd as an Adjective Relative without any Antecedent. Send him back to school again. 20

The Author has not yet seen any Gardens in Italy worth taking notice of. No matter. 59

Water is of great Use when a Fire chances to break out. 443

You don't need to have read the book to get these jokes. I imagine someone reading these out loud à la Monty Python while everyone burst out laughing which made me burst out laughing as well. OK, it's not as funny as a dog pooping C4 making the trash can blow up on Reno 911! but it's pretty damn close! 

Perhaps the moral of the story might be not to write books about Italy when you're young; they might come back to haunt you when you are older... thanks to the index!