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Dewey B. Larson
755 N.E. Royal Court Portland, Oregon 97232 |
Mar. 1, 1983
Dear Jan:
The seven chapters were mailed today. I am sending them by the book rate, so they will be a week or so on the way. As I said in my earlier letter, if the job looks like more than you anticipated, please don't hesitate to change your mind. But if you propose to go ahead, here are some things about the work that should be noted.
First, it may be well to know something about how I operate. As I read the literature of the scientific and other fields in which I am interested, I copy any statement or statistic that seems to have some possibility of being useful in the future. I have hundreds of these notes, and they are part of the raw material that I use in my writing. Of course, I keep these notes as short as possible to save time and effort (most of them originate in some library where I have to make the most of the available time). Because of these conditions under which the notes are made, they are s ect to a number of possibilities of error. I may have copied something incorrectly, or I may read it wrong when I transfer it to a manuscript (my handwriting is not very legible at best). So the final product needs a careful check against the original.
Then there is the question of editions. I have not always noticed, or at least noted, that a book is a “second edition”, or a “revised edition”, or something like that. Because of this edition question, and the many possibilities of errors in the page numbers, if you do not find the quotation on the page that I have specified, refer the item to me for a further check against the original memorandum. Also if the book that I have listed is not available in the Princeton library, don’t go to the trouble of looking somewhere else. Refer it back to me. I may know where to lay my hands on the book.
The references that I have marked in red are from sources that I will not, so far as I know now, take anything else from. You will probably want to deal with these first, and hold the others until you have all of the quotations from each source, so that you do not have to look up any source more than once.
I don’t expect you to verify the legitimacy of the use of the quotation but if you do happen to spot anything that looks like misuse, I would like to be informed. There is always a possibility that a sentence or two may be misinterpreted when it is read many years later. I would, of course, also like to receive any other comments that you may care to make about any aspects of the work.
I have received. the copy of your letter to the NPP, and I will write to you about it as soon as I have time.
Sincerely,
