Academia.edu has been hounding me to start paying. If I were an academic or if my name were something more common I wouldn't bother but I put the thing up there hoping people would read it, and they were offering half price to find out who my readers were.

I was sort of shocked. I don't care about Peter Ludlow; he probably searches for his name. But there are people I was happy to see, and readership has picked up over the last few months. The site records if someone read 5 pages or 150, came by once or three times, or downloaded it.  I'd asked Joseph Koerner to look at it if he had time. Thomas Crow read it last week. How did he find it?  Some other major players. A historian responsible for the US Pavilion at the Biennale. A Professor of European Thought at UCL. Someone with a long history at the BFI. An old friend of an old friend, mentioned and quoted in the piece. New readers almost every day. That's hope I guess.

I've sent a few polite notes out asking for comments from people who I know read the whole thing.  I'm not expecting much.