Quote:

Footnotes belong in technical writing, not literature.




Don't you think that's debatable? If scholium is okay—and Shakespeare's plays are given a generous helping of it in some editions—what's wrong with the author doing it? In fact, would that make it more legitimate? Jorges Luis Borges uses pseudo-exegetical footnotes to great effect, to give a quality of realism to the faux manuscript texts of his short stories.