Enormous Title of Visionary Work Utterly Defeats Library Cataloguer

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2076   Outsider Logic  Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

 There appeared on this blog last week a post regarding a library cataloguer who was not threatened or defeated by a work with an enormous and meandering title. The good librarian got right to it, recorded the deed, and moved on. Today's installment of card catalog magic presents a Library of Congress librarian who decided that enough-was-enough, and that there was simply too-much-title to record, and so simply left the rest of it to dots and to the imagination.

Now for the pamphlet itself and the rest of the title:

The author of this 1938 pamphlet simply started to write on the cover and continued through the rest of the work, and ended on the back cover.  There was no title page, no chapter headings, just a collection of ideas with lots of lists and seemingly nowhere to go.  For a short work (36 pages) the author could've dedicated another quire to some blank space, which really doesn't exist in the pamphlet but which is surprisingly helpful even if the message you are trying to deliver is somewhat, well, outre.  There is a lot of very compressed talk about multi-dimensional spirit and conscience and bank deposits and replacing the dollar and tax collection with "circulation of values", and so on, deep into itself and a closed system of interpretation of the existence of the universe, harmony of spirit, and economic interpretations of "radio bulbs" and the (often misspelled) fourtth [sic] dimension.  The writing is exhausting and enumerated, and even though by its colossal subject matter and the complex brevity it should be a reliably porous document, it is fairly rigid and brittle. It is a visionary work that somehow worked its way into print, and I'm happy for that, and even it is impossible to keep up with its runaway logic it is still a good ride.

The author's representation of a semi-vitruvian spiritual anatomy of humans, called Spirisoulman:

A detail of the fabulously-decorated heart region:

And of course part of the plan for universal economics which somehow wraps up the theory of in I.R., or the Inductive Rightousness of Inductive Truths:

Early on in the history of printed books there was a practice of extended title pages, where there would be the title, and then "support literature" further explaining the title to sometimes some great detail, occasionally winging its way into a title 200 words long.  But that was pretty much before the 18th century and mostly before the 17th and mostly a not-common practice.  The gigantic title in the 20th century seems to be mostly relegated to the less-traveled-road variety of public thinking.

And the card catalog for the undefeated librarian mentioned above:

 

 

Comments

[Jeff Donlan]

It's easy to imagine a cataloger at the end of the day picking up that pamphlet thinking 'I'll do one more.' I can feel the deflation as it sinks in what is in hand. The interior battle to be professional about an unprofessional thing begins. I would have banged my head on the typewriter keys and turned in the catalog card that way. What would the more professional librarian have done -- faithfully typed the entire thing or typed a fraction sufficient to recognize the work (of someone never to be read ... until now).

[John F. Ptak]

I'm pretty sure that I woulsn't've gotten that far...maybe the pamphlet owul dhave gone to a continuous-bottom-of-the-pile, forever to be done.