However long – and, I fear, however fatiguing – this journey may have been, I must not conceal the fact that it is by no means exhaustive, nor was it meant to be. For one thing, each of these chapters merely skims over its subject at the very general level of a typology (this is really and truly only an introduction, and exhortation, to the study of the paratext); for another thing, this inventory of paratextual elements remains incomplete. Some elements (for example, the practices of non-European cultures) simply eluded me because I didn't pay much attention to them or have enough information about them. Other elements are not commonly used nowadays and my knowledge of them is too erratic for me to be able to study them in any meaningful way. For instance, certain elements of the documentary paratext that are characteristic of didactic works are sometimes appended, with or without playful intent, to works of fiction: Senancour's Oberman includes a sort of thematic index called “Indications,” arranged in alphabetical order (Adversité, Aisance, Amitié [Adversity, Ease, Friendship] …); Moby-Dick opens with a comprehensive documentary dossier about whales; Updike's Bech: A Book ends with an imaginary bibliography of works by and studies about the hero (the studies are attributed apocryphally to real critics); the “appendix” of Perec's Vie mode d'emploi [Life: A User's Manual] contains a floor plan of the building, an index of persons and places, a chronology, a list of authors quoted, and an “Alphabetical Checklist of Some of the Stories Narrated in this Manual”.