/lit/ - Literature

>>10076121
>reading introductions, forewords, or prefaces
Only time I'll consider it is if the author them self wrote it. Otherwise, no thanks, I'll leave the critical analysis to me, the person who has yet to form their own opinion on the work.

>>10076126
>he didn't read about the referenced material and it's own viewpoint on the subject

>>10076126
You're actually wrong but okay

>>10076121

>>10076162
Had this in mind when I made the thread, desu.

>>10076121
Introductions can be pretty good imo

>>10076170
How long is it?

>>10076170
it's a good introduction to reading. if you read to any great length, you'll find critical reading takes a backseat after 100 hours. you still pull it out for the good shit.

>>10076178
Knox’s intro for that edition is like seventy pages. Plus there’s a translator’s preface by Fagles, a commentary on the pronunciation of Ancient Greek names and some maps.

>Acknowledgements
>Authors notes
>Translators notes
>Foreword
>Preface
>Introduction
ENOUGH

>decide not to be lazy this time and read the introduction
>writer acts as though we've already read the book and includes spoilers

and that was the last time I read an intro

Who here /Acknowledgements/

/500 pg Prologue/

fuck my life fuck

Do all of you even read?

>>10076195
This fuck

Does anyone actually read all of the above or jump to page 1? Necessary or no?

>>10076228
only if you need context going into it

>>10076121
Historical notes ok, anything with even a smaller whiff of man-in-the-middle opinion from translator/editor and my blood boils. Still read the shit because I’m a completionist

I like the ideaof Outros but never seen one

>>10076195
>Preface to the first edition
>Preface to the second revised edition
>Preface to the third revised edition
>...
>Preface to the ninth corrected edition
>Preface to the tenth corrected edition
>Preface to the restored text edition
>Preface to the fiftieth anniversary edition
>Preface to the seventy-fifth anniversary edition
>Preface to the centenary edition

>>10076148
>reading something without understanding its context

I establish that on my own?
>>10076159
Yeah big boy? How's that?
>>10076207
Also this. If anything, I'll read the intro the second time around reading the book, but too many just launch into critical discussion without any regard for the first time reader.

>>10076294
Wouldn't it be foolish to start without knowing the historical context?

>>10076121

This is actually appropriate in the one case that comes to mind: the Penguin Capital V. 1. Bumping to keep thread alive so I can yammer a bit more.

>>10076121
>introduction has a preface

>>10077413

There. Now, Mandel's introduction runs from 11-86. So not literally to the OP's thing, but add in the other stuff (translator's notes, historical forewords by Marx and Engels etc) which follow on 87-120 and you do still end up with over a hundred pages of front matter. So it's under-or-over 100 pages depending on how you want to parse things.

Even so this is still /proportional/ to the rest (125-1084), which is not quite a thousand pages. All that this means is that the front matter stands to the body of the text in the ratio of about 1:10, which should be a familiar ratio to anyone who's ever read a classic novel about 300 pages long and skipped the introduction which runs about 30 pages.

Despite Mandel being a total partisan of Marx, it is still sensible in principle that a well-known, little-read, controversial and commonly misrepresented work should get a big setup and exegesis beforehand.

>crucial plot points are spoiled in the introduction

Like god fucking damn

Only read intros/notes for nonfiction

who /sparknotes/ here?

>introduction is longer than the work itself

>>10076314
This happened to me with Hegel I think.

Like fucking four prefaces of different editions + translators foreword and notes
.

>>10077448

This is why, in the case of fiction, the /introduction/, if it is appended to the work at all, like bird droppings, should assume its proper place as an /afterword/.

Nabokov had the decency to keep his introductions three pages long

>introduction spoils plot of the book

abrace

>>10076121
introduction is only 100 pages?
fucking disgraceful

why don't we be a bit cheeky and postmodern and write a 300 page prologue to a book that contains only one word: "culture"

>>>10077777

>Book is nothing but introduction

>>10076162
If I read the Edith Hamilton book do I need to read the intro?

>>10077780
>Book is nothing but introductions and commentary
>I bought a collected commentary volume

>>10077898
You mean Mythology? I'd say so but it doesn't really matter what order you read any of the book in.

>>10076121
>a hundred

illiterate amerishit spotted

>>10078509
Insecure high schooler pedant who just discovered that he can make himself feel better by pretending to be smart. ‘A hundred’ is perfect English, faggot. And I’m not American. Hang yourself. Your brand of uppity hypercorrectionism belongs on Reddit.

>the main topic of the preface is why one ought to not write prefaces

>introduction is about the editor's intellectual pet project

>/lit/ doesn't read introductions and prefaces
Why am I not surprised? I bet you guys don't even read commentaries/critiques.

>>10076121
>book is dedicated to the author's wife

>>10076314
You also attempted American Gods I see.

>>10076195
>Quotes only the author believes is relevant.

Read blurbs after or not all.

>>10076300
This.

>>10079903
>Why am I not surprised? I bet you guys don't even read
could've stopped there

>>10080002
There is literally nothing wrong with this

>>10076207
>not being post-plot

>>10079903

It depends almost completely on the type of material that you are reading, how you want to go about reading it, and what you're looking to get out of the experience of reading it. One basic divide: non-fiction versus fiction.

/lit/ naturally spends a lot of time on prose fiction (novels) and when they get it in their heads that they want to read novel X, they (still) want to "read it fresh", or just as fresh as they possibly can, /without some intermediary idiot academic fucking up their initial take of the work by putting a bunch of academic bullshit in their way right up front so as to ruin their palette and feign being more important than the author himself/. Because they want an /authentic, artistic experience/, which is a completely valid wish. This is a problem with the scholarly introduction to fiction: /it believes itself to be more important than the main event, and if it is read first, then it can screw things up./

At least one anon ITT has suggested the possibility that an introduction /gives away a major plot spoiler of a fictional text/, which is wholly irresponsible and indefensible. And it doesn't even matter if the spoiler is commonly known or if the reader is a pleb who only reads for plot. In principle, a book's major plot points should not be ruined by some intro. This is why I say again that the prose fiction "appendix" is better rendered as an /afterword/: this puts the editor/future contributor in their proper place, and doesn't naturally lead a naive young reader to do some other bullshit first.

OTOH if you're doing some complex non-fictional engagement or need a HISTORICAL understanding of various texts, then the tedious front-matter is wholly warranted. I would now go as far as to suggest a general rule:

For editions of non-fiction, the best practice is to have "annotation" in front (accuracy, context, citation). For editions of fiction, the best practice is to have "annotation" in back (getting out of the way of the art).

I think that the above is a wonderful standard that should be pushed for in book publishing and I challenge other anons to challenge my general idea.

>>10076324
yes, hence this thread

>>10080118
Striving to read any work of art "untainted" is ridiculous. You're always tainted. The only difference is that you've lived with the older taint for a while so you think of it as part of yourself and these new ideas as something foreign. You're an amalgamation of ideas, and adding "some academics" ideas to them before reading any work won't make a difference in the grand scheme of things, because you've already done it, albeit perhaps 6 months prior to reading the work in question, and unknowingly.

>>10080002
>book is dedicated to the wife's author

>Preface spends page after page discussing the nature of prefaces and the nature of the act of writing a preface

>>10077573
His notes to the poem Pale Fire were longer then the actual text! I can't imagine sitting through all those insufferable musings of his.

>>10080002
>book is dedicated to wife's son

>>10081342
>monocle shaming