Float Method

James A. Emanuel’s “Christmas Notes,” written between 1991 and 2006, document the scope of Emanuel’s literary activities over a sixteen-year period. In order to better understand Emanuel’s “Christmas Notes,” I ask “what are the key literary happenings in Emanuel’s “Christmas Notes”? Who are his collaborators? What texts are the most prominent during this period? To structure this inquiry, I apply Kenton Rambsy and Peace Ossom’s five step F.L.O.A.T. method for data visualization” (1) formulate a research question, (2) locate a data source, (3) organize the data, (4) analyze the data, and (5) tell a story (The Data Notebook). This method provides a useful framework for tracing patterns across the notes through identifying periods of productivity and highlighting Emanuel’s collaborations. Through this lens, I will tell a story about what Emanuel was writing, who he was working with, and where he concentrated his creative output. Having formulated my research question and identified the data source, I will discuss the organization of the data.

Organization of the Data

This dataset was organized based on categories that Emanuel outlined in his “Christmas Notes” such as “POETRY READINGS,” “POEMS IN BOOKS,” and “ART EXHIBITIONS SHOWING JAE POEMS.” Over the sixteen years of “Christmas Notes,” there are twenty-seven categories that make up the initial dataset. That first dataset was organized in a spreadsheet with each year in its own worksheet and each worksheet having the twenty-seven categories. This organization method privileges Emanuel’s original categorizations by year and activity.

The organization of the data privileges Emanuel’s own listing standards. For instance, out of the three hundred sixteen literary happenings in this dataset, there are two hundred thirty-three items listed with the location. While perhaps more locations could have been included, this was not important enough for Emanuel to list. When Emanuel lists the location of a publisher, those are added to the dataset; however, when he does not name a location, it is not accounted for in the dataset—even when this particular source maybe located with minimal research. In this way, the data seeks to align with Emanuel’s own brevity and documentation style. To emphasize, Emanuel’s documentation methods such as his System of Documentation—his note of the time, date, and place on draft poetry documents, are very intentional. Based on my analysis of Emanuel’s work, if certain information is not listed, then it really must be insignificant to him. However, occasionally, Emanuel includes information that is not important to him. One last example of this is Emanuel annotation of his “Christmas 1994 Notes” with the words “Not important to me. JAE” above the category “REFERENCE BOOKS WITH ESSAYS/ENTRIES,” which includes the publications The First Five Hundred, Five Thousand Personalities of the World and Dictionary of International Biography. Though these entries are not important to him, he still includes them in the “Christmas Notes,” so they are represented in the dataset. In this way, when a location is not documented by Emanuel, I adhere to his standard.

The data was also reorganized in a spreadsheet with eight categories: (1) Title of the Work, (2) Event Title, (3) Location, (4) Paris Location (5) Month, (6) Collaborators, (7) Translations, and (8) Activity Year. This organization method is based on what I thought was important to my research question, which seeks to explore the extent of Emanuel’s literary happenings, including who were his collaborators, and where was these collaborations were located? This consolidated worksheet focuses on potential answers to these questions.

In preparing the worksheets for further analysis, I considered the inconsistencies in Emanuel’s dates. His dating system is organized based on different methods. For instance, an exhibit typically has a data range while a poetry reading is generally one day. For my analysis, I was not interested if Emanuel’s activities occurred on a certain day of the month, so I limited the analysis to months. So, if Emanuel has a date range of an exhibit from October twenty-ninth to November thirteenth in 2005, I would record October and November in the month category. This way I am seeking to understand the broader trends in Emanuel’s activity that emerge overtime.

Additionally, in my analysis of the data source, I did not include the date of Emanuel’s “Christmas Notes” in the analysis, I included the activity year instead. In thirteen of his sixteen Christmas letters, Emanuel includes literary events that took place the following year or several years prior. Sometimes, an event occurred after he had sent the “padding,” and other times he found out about the entry after the year had passed. In order to align with his intention, documenting the literary happening of the year, I privilege the category “Activity Year.”

For the purposes of analyzing the data, I separated two categorizes: the “Location” and “Title of Work” categories. For location, the city and country are separated. I separated titles when Emanuel names multiple works that he read, exhibited, or published together. I standardized the titles of work to their shortened titles that Emanuel used most when being economical. I also removed all quotation marks around titles; these question marks were often inconsistent, especially if the titles were abbreviated or included a period. For this reason, Emanuel’s citation practices were not adhered to.

For named works that are translations, they are recorded in the “Title of Work” field. However, sometimes Emanuel would say he published an English language work alongside its translation such as “The Crooners” being published in Inedit in 1990 with its translation by Charles R.A. Melchers (“Christmas 1991 Notes”). In this instance, the name of the translation is not mentioned. The English version “The Crooners” will be included in “Title of Work;” the word translation will be documented in the “Translation” field; and Charles R.A. Melchers would be listed in the “Collaboration” field.

Lastly, the “Title of Work” and the “Event Title” fields do not duplicate. I privilege the “Title of Work,” which is the name of the work that is the subject of the literary happening. For instance, when Emanuel’s poem “‘For Malcolm X, U.S.A.’ was read at the “Célébration l’Anniversaire Malcolm X,” I only noted the title of the poem and not the “Event Title” (“Christmas 1996 Notes”). The “Event Title” is reserved for events in which Emanuel does not provide a title of his work.