I’ve got a feeling that people will begin swarming into the blog archives in the next few weeks, and my hunch is they’ll be doing it to find out more about the activities of my Kid Protégé John D. Haefele over the last few years.
Maybe more a premonition than a hunch.
To target a topic like Haefele, just put his name in the Search Bar (top right, below the banner). Or click on his name in the Tag Cloud (right column, scrolling down past the various book covers). Some semblance of chronological order informs the summoned-up list of posts, but it’s not perfect.
You might begin to find yourself lost in the maze. One guy new to the site surfed in looking for some Hammett reference, and reported that he plunged into a rabbit warren it took him all day to get clear of — consider that your warning.
In my opinion the easiest way to handle the maze of the blog would be to go back to the first month it became operational. That is if the stuff covered all more or less interests you. If you only want to see specific refs to Hannes Bok or other, punch that name into the Search Bar.
More detailed and long-term topics, such as Robert E. Howard, or pure texts for Hammett, or Haefele and his Heretics, are sure to bog you down in the sheer number of mentions.
If you start from the first post for the new blog in January 2011, I honestly think reading the whole thing to date is no more difficult than just sitting down and reading a book (if you don’t allow yourself to be led too far astray by all the links). Just move ahead to the next post, and the next, and the next. You’ll be here in no time.
That way, you get the development of ideas, you’re in on the discoveries, you see the exact moment when Autograph Mania swept the site. Lots of cool stuff. A home movie of Hammett. Etc.
Reading up, you’ll quickly determine which posts you can immediately skip as of no interest to you — and the fact is that most posts are pretty short. A quick glance, and they’re done.
Sounds daunting, maybe, but I am confident it is an easier process than jumping around through the endless tunnels I have set out for the unwary.
Happy Haefele Hunting.
