/lit/ - Literature

>>10757346
i like to cross out bits of the foreword as though I'm correcting the writer on their understanding of the main text. i also add little notes to help them

>>10757350
Laughed out loud alone in my room like an autist and my neighbors probably heard me good job anon

>>10757346
there's a major spoiler in the foreword to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. needless to say it wrecked my initial reading of the book

been avoiding forewords/intros since then

Foreword is like going to this movie and having some faggot in the entrance of the cinema being super hyped and telling duuude you gotta see this, im already seeing it you mong, i dont need to be hyped up.

>>10757346
Yes, after I've read the book so I know wtf the retard who wrote it is talking about.
Why it never occurred to them to just call it an "afterword" is beyond me.

>translators note
>preface
>glossary
>introduction
>foreward

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>>10757504
Just shows you wont be able to read the entire book if 50 pages throws you off.

Sometimes

No, unless it's like a two paragraph blurb before a Shakespeare play or a work of Plato that basically just gives an overview of how the manuscript came to be.

>>10757510

>he thinks the problem is the number of pages

how slow can you be?

>>10757504
Glossary are useful af
I only could read "The Prince" because of it

>>10757346

I used to read Forewords, Prefaces and Introductions with religious scrupulousness.

Then as I grew up I realized that life was too short to listen to (most) academics.

My current rule-of-thumb is to read anything in a book that 's either a) written by the author or b) short AND written by someone I respect.

I therefore read Author's Prefaces and Introductions, but not most Forewords (written by someone else).

A borderline case is a Translator's Preface. Usually I read these because I would not be reading a translation unless I trusted the translator in the first place.

>>10757625
Did you read Mansfield's translation?

Only if its by the author. Why wouldn't it be?

>>10759204

Technically:
>Introduction:
Written by the author. Part of the work.
>Preface
Usually written by the author. Not really part of the work.
>Foreword
Not written by the author. Not part of the work.

>>10759301
You're a fucking brainlet
I have, in my hands, a copy of Invitation to a Beheading that has a foreword written by Nabokov

>>10759301
>Translator's Preface, usually written by the author

>be a completionist
>read the classics
>100+ page foreword by translator
>literally never read the classics again
Fuck forewords.

>>10757346
Read it and any introductions in the book store if the back cover doesn't do it for you. That's where they'll play intellectual hype man.

>>10757346
Tried reading the foreword to C&P larissa volokhonsky translation and they fucking spoil the plot halfway through. Never reading a foreword again until I finish the actual book or if it has translation notes.

>Epilogue
Dropped

Penguin always spoil their classics in the forward.

>>10760776
My Penguin copy of Fathers and Sons literally has a 70 page essay before the main text

>>10757346
>Decide to give forward a shot
>read 4-5 pages of it
>get annoyed at length
>skip ahead to see how much is left
>literally 30-40 pages of this bullshit
>it's split up into chapters and sub-sections
>dude couldn't get his book published so he just snuck it into another book
forewards are cancer

>>10757350
first posters are truly blessed with divine inspiration

>>10757356
wow holy god the others heard you making noise and being alive? probably be dead by the end of the week anon bee careful

>>10760722
Doesn't everybody already know what happens in that book anyway? They might as well be spoiling the plot to Hamlet for you.

>purchase Justine by Marquis De Sade
>Foreward spoils the end and overall sequence of events
Couldn't even muster the strength to finish the thing

I usually end up reading it like half way through the book or finished it. I dont care about the foreword until Im actually invested.

Spoiler alert

>>10757431
>>10760722
>>10760748
>>10760776
>>10761025
>reading for the plot

>>10757346
I just read the intro shit afterwards. I don't know why all you faggots don't do this. You get an untainted encounter with the work and then some meditations on what you read.

>>10757346
Sometimes, depends on the book and who wrote it.

Forewords sometimes contain some information which can make a read through more fulfilling

They also often contain blatant major spoilers, so I just try to skip over those bits

>>10760988
an awful lot of Nietzsche books are like that

>>10760988
>dude couldn't get his book published so he just snuck it into another book

i read a literally 200 page long forward to das capital by some milquetoast british trotskyst, im like god damn this shit is like it's own book, plus it spoiled it and gave away everything to look forward to, ernest mandel, oh wait he was german, well, whatever

>be me
>want to read Das Kapital
>foreword for 1st edition
>foreword for 2nd edition
>foreword for 3d edition
>translator's note
>Lenin's preface
No wonder I hate commies.
Although the translator's notes for Proust were really useful.

>>10757346
yes it's the literary equivalent of edging

just enjoy the anticipation

>>10757346
for non-fiction
for fiction, after i've read it. sometimes several days later if i want to let it sit with me for a while and come to my own conclusions

>>10761038
retard

I've learned to read them after I have finished the book.

Penguin is the absolute worst offender. They include shit that has either nothing to do with the text or dry excruciatingly specific details.

>Sanshiro
>Preface by Haruki Murakami
>>Oh yeah I owned the complete works of Soseki but I never read them
>goes on to talk about jazz and western beverages

> introduction for Le Morte d'Arthur
>dry and unintelligible
>name-drops Milton and Dante in the first paragraph
>untranslated Latin phrases between parenthesis
>long ass quotes in Old English (even though this faggot, the same editor, has rewritten the full body of the book into modern spellings)

Only if it's from an author I recognize

The SF Masterworks edition of The Fifth Head of Cerberus has a foreword by Adam Roberts (a decent author FWIW) that not only spoils the basic plot, but confidentially and conversationally "solves" some of the most tricky puzzles and deepest layers of the story. The infuriating thing is that Roberts was WRONG on fundamental points, like the nature of the Shadow Children and what happens to Marsh in the final story. We know he's wrong because other people got it right and had it confirmed by Wolfe himself.

So the foreword spoils the plot, fine, pretty much all forewords to classics do these days. But messing up the analysis like that really rustles my jimmies, as they say.

A few months ago I bought a copy of Fifth Head as a gift for a friend. Only the SF Masterworks version is easily available in the UK, so I imported a used (but new condition) older edition from the USA solely to avoid the cancerous foreword.

>>10758814
Nah i read a portuguese one