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When Mailer made the final entry to “Lipton’s,” the journal topped 104,000 words divided into 708 numbered entries. Mailer numbered each entry consecutively over the twenty-one days he wrote in his journal, from December 1, 1954 to | |||
March 4, 1955. Occasionally he would skip a number and likewise repeat one. Sometimes entries were repetitive, redundant, or ridiculous. The archival manuscript is rough, like a first-draft that an editor might be privy to. It should not be published in its current form, but needed to undergo careful editing to present a cohesive, readable, and logical volume. We decided to approach editing the journal with two platforms in mind, the Web and the book, each with its own intended users, (re)searchers and readers, respectively. | |||
In this digital project, the main users of the journal will be researchers looking for quick information, likely via Google or through keyword searches of this site. The journal, then, has been remediated to make search the most likely avenue of access. Mailer’s original entries have been renumbered, eliminating errors in the original manuscript. Each journal entry has its own page, often with linked cross-references to other entries. Blocks of text in the original have been logically paragraphed for readability, and a navigational box appears at the bottom of every entry for browsing. | |||
Since the entries occupy their individual pages, annotations are repeated throughout. These annotations explain important people and events that might not be inferred from the text and often provide a greater intellectual and philosophical context for Mailer’s thought, especially to users who may be unfamiliar with or new to Mailer’s work. While readers would find this application of footnotes redundant, the nature of the digital presentation makes their repetition logical. To expand these notes for those who are interested, we have linked many names to Wikipedia articles. We have tried to keep these links in the footnotes to avoid unnecessary interruption in the text of the entries. | |||
We also employ hover notes: these clarify terms or ideas that Mailer discusses in earlier entries but continues to refer to or develop in subsequent ones. These glossed terms are often abbreviations or neologisms that would make little sense without knowledge of previous entries. Hover notes are indicated by a {{H:title|This is an example of a hover note.|dotted-underline}} and can be accessed by hovering over them with the mouse pointer. | |||
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