Читать книгу Look Both Ways - Katharine Coles - Страница 8

A NOTE ON THE WORK

THIS WORK BEGAN in family lore, in my grandmother’s stories, and in the many hundreds of pages of letters and journals left to me. Part of my goal here has been to give my grandparents voice, and in service of this I have as often as possible allowed their words, even when I have questioned their truthfulness, to represent them directly. Their quotes are distinguished from my own text by italics. For my text, I have used underlines for emphasis. As I worked, the book also came to be about my own journey through both their words and the places where I followed them. I have consolidated and elided events in their lives and in mine, and have also used my imagination to fill in details that are missing.

In excerpted material, I have left my grandparents’ vocabularies as I found them, including atypical spellings and usages as well as sometimes derogatory terms that were common in their day but have fortunately passed out of use, and that I would never choose to use myself. I have also let spellings considered standard at the time, such as the old Dutch spellings of Indonesian names and place-names, stand; to avoid confusion, I have also used these spellings in my own text.

The sketches of Walter’s field expeditions were done by professional artists who accompanied the expeditions. Of the three sketchbooks we have, only one, by H.W.T. Mulle, is signed by the artist. The artists for the other two books, which I believe are by different hands, are unknown.