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You’re about to take a look at excerpts from Further Down the Page: Other Readings of the Americas, a series of letters introducing Caribbean and Latin American literature published in English. These excerpts represent about 25% of the entire manuscript. Readers who would like to own the full text can purchase it via PayPal from the “Order” page.
What you need to run Further Down the Page:
The complete text of this book exists only in electronic form. If you chose to buy it you are buying a compact disk. To use the book you must own or have access to a computer with a CD drive. For the time being the CD will only run on IBM-compatible computers. If you own a MacIntosh computer this CD will not play on your machine.
To make full use of the book your computer has to be able to connect to the internet. If you connect to the internet through a dial-up modem you will have to be online to move from the text to the links.
Generally speaking the faster your machine’s processor and internet connection, the better off you’ll be. However, if you are patient, everything here will eventually come up on slower computers and connections. Some of the external links require additional software. There are a few links to pdf files (requiring Adobe Acrobat Reader). You have the opportunity to listen to audio files and watch some streaming video (both requiring a media player of some sort). In one instance there is a link that requires a Microsoft Power Point reader. The newest version of Internet Explorer or Netscape will improve your ability to move around the web, but older versions will work as well.
Getting around in the text:
Hopefully you are going to find navigating in the text to be a pretty intuitive experience. The table of contents—accessible from the margins on any page—is the most versatile means of browsing. At the bottom of each chapter there are left and right arrows that allow you to back up to the previous chapter or move ahead to the next one. Endnote notations within the text are linked. By clicking on the endnote # itself you are taken to the bottom of the page where the note appears. To return to the text simply click again on the endnote #. Following an external link will take you outside this website. To regain your place in the text close the window you opened when you clicked on the link.
On the links within the text:
Creating external links to other websites on the world wide web can be a frustrating exercise. You have no guarantee that the site you are linking to will still be in business a few months later. Web pages come and go, a host may change a domain name, and so on. There are over 300 external links in Further Down the Page and it’s inevitable that you will experience some of these frustrations. However, everything possible has been done to minimize this experience. All of the links on the web site are verified regularly and at the time you are sent the CD.
On archive.org:
Another approach that I have taken to minimize the problem of “broken” links has been to rely upon archive.org whenever feasible. Their remarkable effort to preserve public documents out there on the web is not widely recognized. I would urge you to go to their web site at http://www.archive.org to read about the project and better understand what you are looking at when clicking on many links contained in this text. When the address line at the bottom of your page contains the prefix http://web.archive.org/web/ you are examining an archived record. Even though the individual web page may no longer exist there is a good chance that the current version of the linked website is still around. I hope that some readers may want to explore the contemporary sites. You can do this by copying that portion of the linked address that follows the archive’s path prefix and pasting the copy into your address line. Here’s an example:
This the address for an archived home page of the Travel Bookshop at archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980628195827/http://www.thetravelbookshop.co.uk/
The most recent incarnation of the website for this bookstore in England can be found at:
http://www.thetravelbookshop.co.uk/
On the books that are mentioned in Further Down The Page:
You don’t have to buy any of the books I have described to be able to read them. In the United States virtually all of them are available through public libraries. Interlibrary loan programs should allow you to get anything you want to read. (A few titles I have mentioned are actually possible to read online—in full.) Used copies of many of these books are regularly sold at cut-rate prices. Probably the largest of the online used booksellers, the Advanced Book Exchange, is a reliable source. Copies of first editions can often be found at the site for the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, currently headed by Ken Lopez of North Hadley, Massachusetts. (Ken’s own site is also an interesting place to browse around for literary materials.) New copies can be had via barnesandnoble.com and borders.com in the US and amazon.com internationally. Those publishers who were gracious enough to let me reproduce the covers of their titles can be accessed directly through their links appearing on the “Permissions” page.
On the stamps:
Nearly 250 Caribbean and Latin American stamps appear in the full text of Further Down the Page. By holding your cursor over the stamp a small label will appear indicating the Scott Stamp Catalogue number. In the US, local swap meets are the best place to start collecting stamps from this hemisphere. There are online dealers of Caribbean and Latin American stamps as well, but be prepared to wait a few weeks for your order to arrive.
Contact:
If you’ve got a question or comment send a note:
