Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland (2003) as well as Miniature Monuments: Modeling German History (2014).
Puff applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting , and reported the following:
From page 99:Learn more about The Antechamber at Stanford University Press website.The production of spacetime in interpersonal contacts is an ‘important means to augment social power.’ […] waiting scenarios in the antechamber involved not only the waiter and the one the waiter hoped to meet; others participated in making such an encounter possible or impossible. Interactions of this kind were marked and marred by opacity and contingencies—factors that were part of the production of power and authority in spacetime during the early modern period. […]Page 99 of The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting issues an invitation to readers to transition from the book’s previous sections on lived times (chapter one) and architectures of waiting (chapter two) to the third and last chapter on actual waiting scenarios people experienced in early modern Europe (1500-1800). As a result, I rehash some findings from earlier pages while reminding readers of the most pressing question they are likely to bring to the reading of this book on waiting in the past: How long did people have to wait in the antechamber?
What was an appropriate wait time for an audience with a person of high standing in early modern Europe? What constituted an excess in making others wait? How did those who waited spend their time? Following [the] ‘science of ceremonies,’ we can speculate that there may not have been straightforward answers to these queries in the early modern period. ‘Practices differ’ or ‘Each and every case is particular’ is what an eighteenth-century expert would have answered. Such answers may not satisfy our curiosity about details regarding the quotidian rhythms of early moderns. Still, the two sixteenth-century tales that inaugurate this part offer telling windows onto waiting scenarios in the antespaces of the powerful. As narrations, they seek to instill memorable lessons about waiting. Characteristically, these stories do not express clear-cut rules but frames of perception about antecameral spacetimes. As narrations—or histories, as the narrator assures us—they were told to trigger thought, insight, and conversation on the part of listeners and readers.
Page 99 thereby stakes out an anticipatory horizon about what is to be discussed on the following pages. I caution the reader that during this time period there may not have been clear-cut rules about wait times across different courts, rulers, and others in the residences of the elites. To a considerable degree, interpersonal encounters between people from different echelons hinged not only on protocol but also on personal gestures and particular contexts.
This page thus functions itself a bit like an antechamber—a room replete with anticipation—as it prepares those who have managed to make it in their reading to here for what for many readers will be the most decisive section of the book. On page 99 we find ourselves at the threshold of a space where audiences take place. To make the most of what is to come, I call on readers to be attentive to what lies behind us and surrounds us, as an experienced waiter in an antechamber would have practiced and done.
With some relief and without waiting longer, I rush to the conclusion that the Page 99 Test works in this case, strange as this seems.
--Marshal Zeringue
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