I don't care if Jesus Christ wrote the introduction to your 100 year old award-winning novel that changed the course of the country; I will not read it. Here are my 8 reasons for not reading book introductions.
1. If the author wanted to be ranted at or raved about in their novel, they would have been presumptuous enough to write their own autobiography.
2. A reader should approach a book as though the book is being read for the first time. Some cases cannot be helped--anyone who picks up The Lord of the Rings is going to know that they are in for a treat. That's culture. But, as much as a reader can help it, they should be approaching a novel in the same manner that the work's first reader did.
3. An author works dreadfully hard on the first sentence of a novel. Hell, a student works hard on the first sentence of an essay. In Essay Writing 101's terms, it's called the "Attention Getter." It is not going to be grabbing anyone's attention after 20 pages of the editor's meek attempt at getting you pumped up for The Grapes of Wrath.
4. Hey. Mr. Editor. Do you really think that you can write an introduction suitable for Paradise Lost? Do you?
5. One of the marks of a good author is their ability to stay hidden in a work. For their ability to develop their characters and suck the reader into the tale. Tolkien didn't pack his bags and leave the Shire, Bilbo did. An introduction shoves the author in your face. I don't think many authors wish for that.
6. I once had a book introduction actually tell me who dies in the end. I don't remember what class I was reading it for, or what book it was but CURSE YOU MARK BRUCE FOR ASSIGNING THE INTRODUCTION.
7. The person writing the introduction tends to describe the characters and situation for you ahead of time, but in a very poor manner. It's like going on a blind date with the novel. You know a few splotchy details from what your overeager friend had to say, which leaves you with wrong assumptions and a false sense of intimacy beforehand.
8. A good book speaks for itself.
To close, I will leave you with a quote by Harper Lee.
"Please spare Mockingbird an Introduction. As a reader I loathe Introductions. To novels, I associate Introductions with long-gone authors and works that are being brought back into print after decades of interment. Although Mockingbird will be 33 this year, it has never been out of print and I am still alive, although very quiet. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introductions is that in some cases they delay the dose to come. Mockingbird still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive the years without preamble."
I kid you not - I almost did a tumblr post last week specifically to rant about introductions. Well done for beating me to it! You've pinpointed the problems quite nicely.
ReplyDeleteI recently picked up a book of poetry whose forward was written by another poet I enjoy, so of course I felt like I couldn't skip over it. But then she begins the stupid thing, "This book is about panic. The word is never mentioned." And I was like, CRAP! Now I'm going to be looking for the underlying panic in the poetry instead of just taking it as it comes! Gah.
And yeah, I've also encountered introductions that give away endings, deaths and all. Why? Why would anyone do such a thing?
Although I don't think forwards/introductions are completely valueless, I wish they'd stick them in the back of the book as afterwords instead. Or just publish them as separate essays.
-Melissa K.
April,
ReplyDeleteNice post. There's been a few times when reading part of the introduction was helpful. One, when the book in non-fiction, and I want to know either what the scope is, or how it is arranged, or how to use it quickly. Few intros are that helpful, though. Two, I read part of an intro to short stories of Gogol, and it had some background on Russian folktale tropes which I found helpful in contextualizing some of the weirdness.
Overall, though, I completely agree that you should not approach a book as though you already know something about it. Nor that you are looking for something in particular. Although, if you know nothing about Proust (such as that his is a Great Book), who would ever read beyond the first volume? Well who would anyway, I guess. Only those who can identify with a man who spent his writing years alone in a cork-lined room. But, you'd never know about that if you didn't read...
the introduction.
Melissa,
Everything surrounding the publishing of a book of poetry, I have come to suspect, is fairly inbred, particularly the introductions and gushy blurbs describing the acrid glaze of the singing language of this new voice. This rule only seems broken when the contents of the book don't also exhibit an inbred quality.
But, hey, it would be pretty fun to go around writing introductions to books of poetry like: this book is about death-defying acts of bravery--this book is about the longing for a spider bite--this book is about living under the dark sun of an intense hatred one can't escape. Though only the enlightened will discern this. The rest of you will be content to think it's about flowers, falling in love, and doing embroidery on sun-dappled park benches while reminiscing about precious childhood moments one shared with one's mother. Oh, and that one sestina about collecting plates.
Will