As years go by, my Residua boggle my mind ever more. So many words! So many pieces of text! And so many authors that innocently parade under my own name! So as to understand my magnum opus better, if at all, I am determined to analyze it as objectively as I can, using scientific tools and methods. Which is why I recently ordered from the Amazon a book about, say, content analysis. Roberto Franzosi’s From Words to Numbers: Narrative, Data, and Social Science.[1] By the way, I met him at the University of Reading, where we used to teach at the same time for a few years. Now he is back in the States, whence he came to England, just as I did. Anyhow, the book arrived in this morning’s mail. As the author says in several places discovered at random on my slow return home from the post office, “from” and “to” suggest a journey. It will take me a month or two to master this hefty volume, and then it will take me a year or two to apply it to my Residua, but I have started my journey already. In fact, the old “from” is some way behind me by now.

Footnote

1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.