The idea that a written work rarely, if ever, appears without a number of paratexts is central to this piece, and the fact that you are reading this abstract somewhat proves the point. Taking inspiration from Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms, this article muses over several topics including, but not limited to, paratexts, translation, aphorism, footnotes, “academic voice” and maddening process of trying to write coherently on such topics and their interconnected nature. This piece was originally written for my MA Writing the Modern World as part of the ‘Creative Critical Writing’ module.
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