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.

Addendum I (March 7, 2018)

Since this piece was penned, no less than fifteen content analyses have been conducted along Franzosi’s lines (”Content Analysis: Content Analysis,” December 15, 2012). The subjects have varied widely, and they will require yet another content analysis in turn. Still, I am ever less sure of this “scientific” attempt to come to grips with my writings. As I am approaching twenty-thousand pieces of writing and five-thousand addenda extending them, as well as four-million words, I am baffled by the gargantuan task. More important, I am ever more dubious about its aim. In retrospect, my Residua chart my path to liberation (”Toward a Brief Outline of My Residua,” December 30, 2016). Although my meandering is almost sickening in hindsight, liberation is behind me by now (”On Liberation,” October 4, 2017). So, why bother? And for whose sake? Although I am likely to conduct many more content analyses in the years to come, they will be just for fun. The same can be said about the bulk of my writings, I hasten to add. I have been entertaining myself for more than four decades already, and this is what I will continue doing till my last breath. Peekaboo!

Addendum II (May 11, 2020)

Since the first addendum was penned, seven more content analyses of my magnum opus have been conducted. So far, their number has increased to no less than twenty-two. But the search words or phrases used over the last eight years are baffling still. And here they are in their order of application: cunt, dear reader, content analysis, for beginners, Tlön, nirvana, Strasbourg, Slobodan Vugrinec, Nietzsche, testamentum, erection, space colonization, shaman, postscriptum, tenderfoot, in my dotage, for the birds, World War III, Nasrudin, no-bullshit, silly old man, and posthistory. Gosh! But what have I learned from all of the above? To tell the truth, next to nothing. Although I am pretty sure to continue with this sort of inquiry into my writing project, chances are that it will lead nowhere. My only excuse is that my liberation is behind me already, as I put it in the previous addendum. In other words, content analysis is a thing of the past, as it were. At best, it amounts to my own entertainment. With that in mind, I can think of a whole bunch of additional search words or phrases: Odysseus (Ulysses), death, Mediterranean, my fellow humans, orgasm, Venice, human stupidity, fucking, enlightenment, my last breath, Latin, evolution, climate change, scum of the earth, delusion… But enough. When it comes to entertainment of my own self, I am surely a pro.

Footnote

1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.