Meaning of ‘Pythonesque pointing finger’

The passage below is from A History of the Index by Dennis Duncan.

Except that it is by no means the only standard. Imagine a different kind of book: a reference book this time – an encyclopedia, perhaps, or a bilingual dictionary: the kind of book you would use to look something up, but which you’d be unlikely to read from start to finish. What happens to the page layout now that the book is being used as a container for many discrete pieces of information, rather

than for a single, continuous narrative? Is the text in multiple columns now? Maybe it is heavily abbreviated, words reduced to italicized morsels, n. for noun, d. for died. Maybe it’s flecked with cross-references, emboldened, (parenthesized). How are the headwords marked out? A different typeface or larger lettering? Or maybe something in the margin, a bullet or a manicule, that Pythonesque pointing finger, telling us that this is the start of a new entry, a new unit of information? Probably there will be a running head above the text block, telling us what we can expect to find on this particular page, or how far through the alphabet we are.

I want to ask about three questions on the underlined phrases.

First, does ‘Pythonesque pointing finger’ explain ‘manicule’ in more picturesque way, I mean, in visual way? (Am I right?)

Second, I think ‘Pythonesque’ can be taken out without any serious harm done of the meaning of the sentence. (Am I right?)

Last, but I want to know the meaning of ‘Pythonesque’ in this context. I did my research and found out that Pythonesque means absurd and unpredictable, and originally it was the title of a drama, Monty Python. The drama probably is just as absurd as its meaning. But still I don’t know why this word is used in this passage, and why any pointing finger symbol can be absurd.

Thanks in advance.