Posted By:
barry arnoldMany,many thanks everyone for the very helpful comments and insights.
I assure you that they are being incubated.
I personally think that we are at a very important crossroads in T206
scholarship,in large part due to Scot Reader's book which not only brought new pieces of the puzzle but created a larger newly designed puzzle. I hope that he knows that I, and many others, watch intently for each unfolding of the design.
I have brought up the Magie/Doyle Nat'l issue because I think this is an
important piece of the larger puzzle that needs reconsideration. I learned
how important a task this can be in my work in textual criticism years ago.
JimB knows much better than I how a particular error in a manuscript may
appear to change key ideological elements for one generation of scholarship
and then become a footnote, a generation or two later. The very recent history of the Doyle Nat'l find makes me wonder about it, in this respect.
JimB and Barry S.'s citing of the '79 Topps Bump Will's card strikes a chord,
as I wonder about Magie and Doyle. Sometimes in the formation of a field of study, we realize that we have been to some degree simply accepting what we have been given or told and we decide to take a second look at things, with deep respect and
gratitude for all that has been provided before us.
A broader issue than the Magie/Doyle Nat'l one but linked inextricably to it
is the issue of errors in general. I raise the issue because this is an
amorphous area which could use this or the next generation's definitional precision and clarity. As Barry S. strongly contended, we are in an era in which fakes abound, particularly in this arena of printing errors. Perhaps
a measured reining in of our financial preoccupation with anomalies (only to the point of definitional precision,e.g. an errata page---never to the point of taking away the joy of en'joy'ing the anomaly) might begin to help with the problem Barry S. and others note.
all the best,
Barry