I see. Of course it says "Annotated" on the cover, and that might have given fair warning, but I think explaining "ramshackle" is a step too far; it insults the reader's intelligence, for it is certainly American English as well. The implication that it isn't, or that it is obscure, betrays the compiler's questionable grasp of his own language, and with that one gaffe, his footing as a steward of literature cannot be taken seriously. One almost feels sorry for him. But I'll grant that the publishing date may perhaps be taken into account: A couple of years ago I met a young fellow who was delighted that the word "savage" was seeing a revival from its supposed obsolescence! I nearly wept.
At least one reader review agrees with your disappointment, excerpted here:
Quote:
I have tried several times to read a few of the tales, but reading the stories is such a huge effort that I have put it aside and will likely not attempt to read it again. Why? Because this specific edition is annotated by an M. Grant Kellermeyer, and the annotations are endless, unnecessary, didactic, distracting, and are as prevalent as the punctuation.. except far far more distracting and annoying. That someone-- anyone-- would feel the need to "explain" a word in nearly every other sentence is simply ludicrous. If my comments seem disparaging, then I've succeeded.
That wasn't you, was it?
I'm sure I would be just as put off by the book for the same reasons, and would probably post a similar review. Still and all, I must repeat that one should resist the assumption that all American-published anthologies and similar are going to be like that. I would suggest that in your case, it's simply been the luck of the draw. I've got a handful of editions of James Joyce's works from Viking Press (a New York house), and in every one the reader is entirely on their own; certainly the verb "peach" would be a candidate for a footnote, but nope. Most of my American-published books are not annotated, and when they are, it is sparsely, or else the subject is rife with the need for it, such as Tibetan esoteric material or a study of Japanese poetry, where heavy annotation is not only reasonable, but necessary for the unwashed Western reader; no one would call that easy reading, but it's not meant to be. Upon checking further, somewhat to my surprise even my copy of Herodotus'
The Histories has hardly any annotation at all, and that too is a US edition.
But to be fair, although I prefer doing my own research, I think annotating British works for the US reader should not be thought particularly remarkable. Most Yanks won't know what a butty is, or that Cornwall has a distinct history and identity as a nation in its own right, or how many stone they weigh - nor would it occur to them that they ought to know these things; that's "over there", and we have our own fish to fry, after all. In some things, explanations are certainly in order, for although we all speak the same language, by the same token, we do not: What's familiar and self-evident in the UK will likely be exotic and opaque to the average US reader. For that matter, how many Brits here know what scrapple is? Or the Rust Belt? Or a krewe? Or brownie points?
Close reading renders a service in opening up a world that might not otherwise have been guessed at. But in the case of Ben's book, it sounds too overdone to be worthwhile.
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