of scholarly potential. Without a background in this discipline, it is difficult to say whether or not he fully achieved this aim, but as a general reader I was left a little bewildered by his treatment of historical documents — such as urban plans — as literary texts: something they absolutely are not. This, in my view, misguided treatment leads the author to compare imagined security patrols in proposed below-ground London tunnels to H.G. Wells’s race of Morlocks in The Time Machine (82). We are assured that the practice of reading non-literature as literature is ‘characteristic’ of his discipline, but to the lay reader such comparisons may seem somewhat fanciful, and to lead nowhere in particular. Perhaps we are on safer ground if we focus on what the book has to say about archives. The archive (which, to Harle, is a place of ‘tedium’ (12), ‘over protective reading room staff’(12), ‘excruciatingly tedious lists’ (32) and a ‘quietly suppressive atmosphere’ (32) is, by his own admission, used as a kind of negative counterweight to offset the vibrancy of the material held within the stacks. Despite this outlook (that one tries not to be affronted by) Harle does make some valid criticisms of archival practices. He highlights how difficult it can be for the researcher to locate unfinished works with archival finding aids, as ‘it is likely that, if an abandoned or unfinished project is foregrounded in archival description, it is most likely because of the significance of its creator, or its relation to a publicly known text’ (29), meaning that the abandoned work suffers from a ‘crude selectivity’ (29) based on the profile of the author. Harle uses a passage from Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer to highlight the perplexities of archival arrangement. He writes that ‘[t]he layers of human interference, chance and organizational schematics that arrange the remnants of information [. . .] bring a bewildering sense of disorder — but perhaps more conspicuously — mistrust’ (28) a sense that is completely opposed to the one the arranging archivist is aiming for. He also ‘problematizes’ archival sacred cows such as original order, asking, in the context of the Llano del Rio archive, ‘What if there are multiple original orders or equally, multiple origins or versions?’ (50) In posing such questions, Harle highlights the various ways our own methods and theories could be considered incomplete. It is an enlightening if at times puzzling, reading of some wonderful collections, both wellknown and obscure, and Harle should be praised for locating them and bringing them to light. Thank goodness those ‘excruciatingly tedious’ finding aids were written.

中文翻译：

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整理档案记录

的学术潜力。没有这门学科的背景，很难说他是否完全实现了这个目标，但作为一个普通读者，我对他将历史文件——比如城市规划——作为文学文本的处理感到有些困惑：他们的东西绝对不是。在我看来，这种误入歧途的处理方式导致作者将拟议的伦敦地下隧道中想象的安全巡逻与 HG Wells 的《时光机》中的莫洛克种族进行比较 (82)。我们确信将非文学作为文学阅读的做法是他的学科的“特征”，但对于非专业读者来说，这种比较可能看起来有些幻想，并且没有特别的指导。如果我们专注于书中关于档案的内容，也许我们会处于更安全的境地。档案馆（对哈尔来说，这是一个“乏味”的地方（12），他自己承认，“过度保护阅览室工作人员”（12）、“极其乏味的清单”（32）和“安静压抑的气氛”（32）被用作一种负面平衡，以抵消材料的活力保存在堆栈中。尽管有这种观点（人们试图不被冒犯），Harle 确实对档案实践提出了一些有效的批评。他强调了研究人员使用档案查找辅助工具定位未完成的作品是多么困难，因为“如果一个废弃或未完成的项目在档案描述中被突出显示，这很可能是因为其创作者的重要性，或其与公开文本的关系”（29），这意味着被放弃的作品受到基于作者简介的“粗略选择性”（29）的影响。Harle 使用 Aldous Huxley 的 After Many a Summer 中的一段话来强调档案安排的困惑。他写道，“人为干扰、机会和组织结构图的层数安排了信息的残余[。. .] 带来一种令人眼花缭乱的无序感——但也许更明显——不信任感”(28) 一种与整理档案员所追求的完全相反的感觉。他还“质疑”档案圣牛，例如原始订单，在 Llano del Rio 档案的背景下问道，“如果有多个原始订单，或者同样地，多个起源或版本怎么办？” (50) 在提出这些问题时，Harle 强调了我们自己的方法和理论可能被认为不完整的各种方式。如果有时令人费解，阅读一些精彩的藏品是一种启发，既众所周知又默默无闻，哈尔应该因找到它们并将它们曝光而受到称赞。谢天谢地，那些“极其乏味”​​的查找辅助工具被编写出来了。