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all awareness of any English being involved. Just because the activity has gotten
“compiled” - as computer people would say - doesn't mean that the connection
between the plan and the concrete situation of using it becomes any less prob-
lematic. Why? Perhaps you never stop saying the plan-text to yourself; perhaps
as you routinize your actions you routinize your interpretive process as well.
Here, then, is the story. The Boston Globe recently began an expanded
arts section in their Sunday edition. Called “Arts Etc”, it gathers all the Sun-
day movie, arts, book reviews, arts schedules and advertising, and high-brow
cultural commentary. This section doesn't have clearly delineated departments
except for the final few pages, which are marked off for book reviews. The topic
review department, in fact, is wholly unchanged from the pre-Arts-Etc Sunday
Globe. The first of the topic review pages has its own banner and distinctive
format, and all of the longer topic reviews begin on that page and continue
inside, where there are also shorter reviews and lists of best sellers and so forth.
Now, when reading the newspaper I will often come across the continua-
tion of an article that looks interesting even though I hadn't noticed it when I
wasreadingthepageonwhichitbegan.SoI'llhavetobackuptotheearlier
page to read the beginning of the article.
Last Sunday, then, I was reading a book review in the Globe. In particular,
I was in the interior of the topic review section, having followed an article from
the topic review section's first page (which, let us say, was page C15), when I
came upon a headline about an author I was interested in reading about. Fo-
cusing on this headline, I found that it was a continuation. Whereupon, oddly,
I turned to page C1 - i.e., the front page of the whole arts section - and not
to page C15 - i.e., the first page of the topic review section. I
knew
that all the
topic reviews began on C15, not C1, but I turned to C1 anyway. When I got
C1 in front of me, it was not at all what I expected; momentarily confused, I
figuredoutthatIshouldturntoC15instead.
Saying “C1” and “C15” is of course misleading. I don't think I knew that it
was section “C” or page 15. My mistake, I think, turned on my never having re-
flected on the odd relationship between the two pages: the topic review section
was a clear “part” of the arts section, but the arts section didn't have any other
clear “parts”. Both page C1 and page C15 were the “front” of something - the
arts section and the topic review section, respectively. I had long been familiar
with the Sunday Globe book review section's format, and its design and layout
did little to make it look like a part of the superordinate arts section.
Here's what I think happened. When I went to turn to the beginning of
the review I wanted to read, I turned to “the front”, perhaps even “the front
of the section”. I'm not sure what I mean by double-quoting those two English
