[vessenes]

I read IJ in a two (three?) day binge shortly after it was published and never returned. Although I will say I really liked it. Since you're an experienced reader, I'll ask a question bugging me since the 1990s -- my intuition post-read was that you would get a totally different plot line out of the novel if you skipped the endnotes. Holding the novel in one's head is a lot to ask, especially of someone who just read straight through very quickly, so I'm curious what the current literary establishment thinks about the end notes, and how the main text interacts with them from a more formal or structural standpoint.

Any thoughts appreciated!

[chiply]

I don't have anything sophisticated to say about this, but I know the footnotes are critical. There are some plot points in there. They are also an important aspect of the book's structure and the methodology of reading the text. I'd say skipping the end notes would be a disservice to the reader as they would miss so much.

Something I want to do is read the footnotes alone in 1 whack and see what that experience feels like. I haven't done this yet, but I feel like it could illuminate exactly how much of what I latently remember about the novel is located in the footnotes.