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What is the purpose/origin of preface-writers listing their location at the end of a book preface (e.g. "Andrew Justin, Helsinki, Finland")?

It always seems kind of show-offy, and is essentially irrelevant. Just convention?

Bion Satir asked in Writers & Publishing 8 months ago | Report

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  • Dinolock_small
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    protosaurus

    This is a really old question but I recently got into a discussion about "the saddest lines books" with some people and someone brought up a very good point about Ulysses that ties directly to your question.

    He said that "Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921" -- the final line of Ulysses -- is one of the saddest lines in literature.

    For this point to stick, we have to agree that Joyce loved Ireland. Mudede caught this when he called Ulysses an attack on the English language -- which had been "an institution that oppressed the Irish for centuries." I haven't read everything by Joyce, but just based on Portrait, Dubliners, and Ulysses, I certainly feel like he loved Ireland, and I think this opinion is generally accepted.

    So when he ends his epic book with the locations he wrote it in, and none of them are Ireland, he is accepting his self imposed exile from the country he loves, and Ulysses may be the way he processed the fact that he was never going back to it.

    There's a pretty significant purpose to the listing the author's location at the end of one of the most famous books in history :)

    protosaurus answered in Writers & Publishing 2 months ago | Report
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  • Ava_small
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    I don't know from that angle, but sometimes it ties into stuff(like if they wrote it at a residency some like that kind of recognition noted somewhere but usually it's a place followed by the organization that they were at while making the work. Kind of like how residencies like a piece of visual art created there to be donated, a tipping of the hat and thank you for the peace and quiet to get the work done

    sublevelthree answered in Writers & Publishing 8 months ago | Report
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