Belushi, John
and amphetamines
alcoholism
benzedrine and
barbiturates

and so on for a long list of substances, and DAMMIT I wish I could find a reference. Thought it was in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” but it wasn’t.

Paul, Saint; less widely appreciated than Mr. Charles Chaplin;

Hegel, G. W. F.; was a philosophical disaster;

Green, T. H.; his power of producing prigs; and

God; tentatively compared to Jeremy Bentham.

Self-indulgent, yes, but worth the price of admission.

“Aamons, Mona:” the index said, “adopted by Monzano in order to boost Monzano’s popularity, 194-199, 216n.; childhood in compound of House of Hope and Mercy, 63-81; childhood romance with P. Castle, 72f; death of father, 89ff; death of mother, 92f; embarrassed by role as national erotic symbol, 80, 95f, 166n., 209, 274n., 400-406, 566n., 678; lives with Bokonon, 92-98, 196-197; poems about, 2n., 26, 114, 119, 311, 315, 477n., 501, 507, 555n.,…

I showed this index entry to the Mintons, asking them if it didn’t think it was an enchanting biography in itself, a biography of a reluctant goddess of love. I got an unexpectedly expert answer, as one does in life sometimes. It
appeared that Claire Minton, in her time, had been a professional indexer. I had never heard of such a profession before… She said that indexing was athing only the most amateurish author undertook to do for his own book. I asked her what she thought of Philip Castle’s job.

“Flattering to the author, insulting to the reader,” she said. “In a hyphenated word,” she said with the shrewd amiability of an expert, “self-indulgent. I’m always embarrassed when I see an index an author has made of his own work. It’s a revealing thing… a shameless exhibition—to the trained eye.”