Because introductions are not written by the original author and are instead written by popular would-be intellectual types who wish to grandstand. Never read forewords, never read introductions unless written by the original author the text they precede.
exploiting literature's status to bolster and highlight your pseudointellectual and performative spiels, and your own fame, is not the same thing my friend
The exegetic material (if included at all) should be placed at the end of the book. Norton critical editions correctly use this layout. Reading an introduction by a critic before reading the book is no better than reading the cliff's notes or the wikipedia in advance. Form your own clean opinion first.
I dont read forewords, anon. I assume they shit on him because he was an aggressive anti-semite and Proto-Fascist. I've heard the same said for Carl Schmitt.
[...] >NEVER READ SECONDARY LITERATURE >DISCUSSING AND THINKING ABOUT LITERATURE IS IMPORTANT
Choose one, morons.
Like every aspect of life, the devil is in the detail. Water is important and should be drank but not all water is suitable. Are you able to comprehend this, you fricking puddle drinker?
The exegetic material (if included at all) should be placed at the end of the book. Norton critical editions correctly use this layout. Reading an introduction by a critic before reading the book is no better than reading the cliff's notes or the wikipedia in advance. Form your own clean opinion first.
Why include them at all? Better to write a book and let their contribution stand on their own merits. Including them in the (re-)publication of the original works implies an authenticity of the comments that is simply not true for the majority of works.
Reading a secondary source won't kill you like drinking bacteria infested water. Like you said, the devil is in the details. Maybe next time don't make a false comparison that is a complete nonsequitur.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Why would you opt for a terrible secondary source when you have the primary source in your hand?
If you care so much about plot, it doesn't make sense that you would read an introduction. Someone who reads an introduction wants more than a surface level understanding, so they're less likely to care about plot spoilers since they know there's more a book than plot.
I read introductions only after I have finished reading the actual book. Mostly because I want to form my own opinions first and then read what other people thought. No one around me reads, much less read what I read, so reading an introduction is the closest I'll get to having a conversation about the book with another person. So I always treat introductions as afterwords.
Originally, it was meant to give historical and cultural context to a given text.
In this contemporary setting, it means given a rebuttal or an anachronistic interpretation against the outdated ideas.
Marginally, and by only the tiniest margin. A good work is a good work no matter how many times you've read it. If being spoiled harms the reader, it's only because the material is trash and notable only for being shocking.
>If being spoiled harms the reader, it's only because the material is trash and notable only for being shocking.
Not necessarily. It's not really the shock but knowing the fate of the characters in explicit detail. It affects how you read the book because you're not really reading it for the first time as when it came out.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>because you're not really reading it for the first time
So? Rereading a good novel is usually even better than the first time. Note that I said "good" novel.
1 year ago
Anonymous
But that's the point, you are supposedly reading it for the first time yet you know the explicit, important fates of the characters from second-hand sources, not from reading the novel yourself. To claim it has no impact on your reading experience is being dishonest. Does it completely ruin your experience? No, but it does damage it.
Because only women and homosexuals care about muh spoilers and nobody reads the introduction to fiction books.
Because introductions are not written by the original author and are instead written by popular would-be intellectual types who wish to grandstand. Never read forewords, never read introductions unless written by the original author the text they precede.
This, my copy of BK features an introduction by Freud in which he explains why Dosto is sexually frustrated. I quickly jumped over it.
>NEVER READ SECONDARY LITERATURE
>DISCUSSING AND THINKING ABOUT LITERATURE IS IMPORTANT
Choose one, morons.
exploiting literature's status to bolster and highlight your pseudointellectual and performative spiels, and your own fame, is not the same thing my friend
The exegetic material (if included at all) should be placed at the end of the book. Norton critical editions correctly use this layout. Reading an introduction by a critic before reading the book is no better than reading the cliff's notes or the wikipedia in advance. Form your own clean opinion first.
Did you post Carlyle because every modern foreword to his works shits on him relentlessly?
I dont read forewords, anon. I assume they shit on him because he was an aggressive anti-semite and Proto-Fascist. I've heard the same said for Carl Schmitt.
Like every aspect of life, the devil is in the detail. Water is important and should be drank but not all water is suitable. Are you able to comprehend this, you fricking puddle drinker?
Why include them at all? Better to write a book and let their contribution stand on their own merits. Including them in the (re-)publication of the original works implies an authenticity of the comments that is simply not true for the majority of works.
Reading a secondary source won't kill you like drinking bacteria infested water. Like you said, the devil is in the details. Maybe next time don't make a false comparison that is a complete nonsequitur.
Why would you opt for a terrible secondary source when you have the primary source in your hand?
This. After reading two bad forewords I'm never reading them again.
If you care so much about plot, it doesn't make sense that you would read an introduction. Someone who reads an introduction wants more than a surface level understanding, so they're less likely to care about plot spoilers since they know there's more a book than plot.
It's a mental ilness to be upset about spoilers
It's more or less standard with Oxford World's Classics.
I only ever read the intro if its a background of the author never ever will I read if its about some pseuds analysis of the novel frick off
I read introductions only after I have finished reading the actual book. Mostly because I want to form my own opinions first and then read what other people thought. No one around me reads, much less read what I read, so reading an introduction is the closest I'll get to having a conversation about the book with another person. So I always treat introductions as afterwords.
Originally, it was meant to give historical and cultural context to a given text.
In this contemporary setting, it means given a rebuttal or an anachronistic interpretation against the outdated ideas.
*giving
she'll look better without the axillary hair
Black Flag is so shitty. I'd knock Henry Rollins' homosexual head right off his cuckold shoulders.
It's a mental illness to be upset about spoilers
Still a better experience to not have a book spoiled
Marginally, and by only the tiniest margin. A good work is a good work no matter how many times you've read it. If being spoiled harms the reader, it's only because the material is trash and notable only for being shocking.
>If being spoiled harms the reader, it's only because the material is trash and notable only for being shocking.
Not necessarily. It's not really the shock but knowing the fate of the characters in explicit detail. It affects how you read the book because you're not really reading it for the first time as when it came out.
>because you're not really reading it for the first time
So? Rereading a good novel is usually even better than the first time. Note that I said "good" novel.
But that's the point, you are supposedly reading it for the first time yet you know the explicit, important fates of the characters from second-hand sources, not from reading the novel yourself. To claim it has no impact on your reading experience is being dishonest. Does it completely ruin your experience? No, but it does damage it.