/lit/ - Literature

name one bock that does this

>>10923845
>Reading Huck Finn and there's the obligational intro from a pseud black man whose only literary qualification is his melanin content whining about the word nigger

>>10923849
foucault's forward to anti-oedipus basically said "i dont agree with any of this bullshit but since we're fellow post-modern french pricks i took the money to write this"

Penguin's edition of The Social Contract has someone who vastly misinterprets Rousseau's political philosophy try to call what he's saying 'wrong'. And you can also tell he's a filthy atheist by his rhetoric.

>foreword is 50 pages of Harold Bloom making vague comparisons to Shakespeare even though the author likely never read him

>>10923876
the social contract is wrong tho, there's nothing wrong with an intro saying "this is a historically important documents but its also fucking retarded"

>>10923889
This, communalists can suck my cock

>>10923845
>the foreword puts the 19th century novel into Marxist-Leninist perspective

>>10923888
>even though the author likely never read him

Unless you mean specific plays no way

>>10923888
grossman's don quixote?

>>10923845
>the foreword admits he doesn't understand wtf is going on half the time but he's sure its brilliant
looking at you J.N. Findlay

>>10923908
lol his endnotes were equally as worthless

>>10923909
it's true, it's true

>>10923896
>>10923889
The Social Contract can't be entirely wrong. It's like saying The Prince is entirely wrong. It's full of anecdotal evidence of different sorts of immutable political truths.

>forward calls the author "an enigma wrapped in a riddle"

really man, where the fuck did this find this guy

>>10923920
>implying the Prince isn't mostly right

>>10923931
That's exactly what I'm implying, yes. It seems you have incredible reading comprehension.

>>10923933
the only social contract is the ruling class takes as much surplus from the ruled as they can without killing the workers faster than they can reproduce

>>10923935
... Unless the ruling class is simply the same folk as the classes beneath them and there is fluid movement between the two entities you pseud moron

>>10923935
Where are you getting this from? Neither Machiavelli nor Rousseau said this.

Who has said this sort of retarded philosophy?

There have been some sociologists/economists who have said the elite have tried to raise the birth rate in the lower classes artificially through welfare/debasement (proliferation) of the currency, etc. This is, of course, an attempt to control the masses, by decreasing their temptation to sedition.

So if that's the theory you're talking about, you've got it backwards. Plus, the 'elite' is not the ruling class.

>>10923944
why would that make any difference at all? the social contract is fucking stupid

>>10923950
How can you hate The Social Contract and like The Prince? They are basically the same book.

>>10923948
rousseau didnt say it because rousseau was a dumbass

>>10923956
Ah, I see. You're eighteen. Cool.

>>10923845
>The foreword is just a summary of the plot and themes.
>The foreword is just another author explaining why a few choice quotes are so deep and/or pretty.
>The foreword quotes entire poems from the collection.
>The foreword is twenty pages of nonspecific praise.

>>10923958
the guy who wrote the intro to your translation of the social contract that said it was dumb was also 18? wow he must be very precocious

>>10923975
He didn't say it was dumb, he said it was flawed, probably because he was a filthy atheist.

Your reading comprehension waxes and wanes, I see. Hopefully this post will be caught in a favorable lunar cycle.

>>10923935
>surplus

No such thing

>>10923985
>for this to make sense you just have to believe in supernatural bullshit

next you'll be telling me the theory that aliens built the pyramids is only a flawed theory if you dont believe in aliens, what kind of a filthy faggot doesnt believe in aliens amirite

>>10923990
if you make more than you need for subsistence and it goes to someone other than the person who did the work, guess what that was the surplus, read a book you teaparty cuck

>>10923996
Define subsistence

>>10923858
What? That's not what it says at all.

>>10924002
the amount needed to support a human life

>>10923996
With agriculture, there is just a standard rate of profit all farmers kind of gravitate around. So you're right, surpluses can be greater or smaller than others, but because of rent only relative to productivity.

Surplus cannot be generated simply by 'giving food away hurr' either. The recompense needs to be enough to cover all the costs of production, and very many times farmers will go through periods of lower-than-average profits, usually just hurting their own salaries because of stringent legal requirements on the costs of production. Plus there are fixed costs, upkeep.

I mean, the 'surplus' as you defined it can easily be a deficit, so this is just poor word choice on your part.

>>10923991
I see, poor reading comprehension again from an atheist, what a surprise.

>>10923935
>>10923944
>>10923948
>>10923950
>>10923954
>>10923956
>>10923958
>>10923960
>>10923975
>>10923985
>>10923990
>>10923991
>>10923996
>>10924002
>>10924005
>>10924008
Excuse me I was told there would be foreword memes

>>10924008
So what were Victorian workers doing with drinking beer and hats. Seems they were getting more than subsistence

>>10924018
>mad that a thread isn't staying on track

No offense, but there can literally be nothing ITT pertaining to the OP. It is just common courtesy to make it even tangentially related.

I usually like forewards when they're unbiased but if they're opinion-based, then they fail. There. That's the best position one can take on this, bar none.

>the foreword shits on the unrelated book you just finished reading

>>10924021
idk but it wasnt like there was some unspoken contract saying "we demand above and beyond our subsistence hats and beer" and the ruling classes decided to give up some of their cash and shower the workers with free hats (beer was always an important source of calories in the european diet so calling beer "not subsistence" is somewhat disingenuous)

>>10924041
>idk but it wasnt like there was some unspoken contract saying "we demand above and beyond our subsistence hats and beer" and the ruling classes decided to give up some of their cash and shower the workers with free hats (beer was always an important source of calories in the european diet so calling beer "not subsistence" is somewhat disingenuous)

>>10923845
>3 pages of the foreword dedicated solely to an anecdote of how the author would wear cowboy boots at parties and run his mouth while bees buzzed around him

>>10924054
>gets mad about beer and hats

hey you brought it up "woah but dude these people have fucking HATS clearly the ruling class isnt exploiting them"

>>10924074
I'm mad about you being this stupid.

>>10924074
So what is your point then, because I can tell you mine. Worker salaries are dictated by their market value, subsistence and surplus by extension is completely irrelevant to how much they get paid

>>10923845
>he reads the foreword

>>10923845
>the author rights his own foreword, before the preface, before the introduction

>>10924083
the fact that workers are even in a "market" and not just hunting and gathering should tell you something has gone horribly wrong, moreover isn't interesting how when workers "market value" starts to go up suddenly the ruling class discovers a new love of immigration? workers say they want less immigration but even with the election of a nominally anti-immigration president immigration has not slowed, and strangely despite the british workers voting or brexit the brexit still isnt actually happening, weird how the "market" for workers only seems to go one way

>>10924086
>jumping in unprepared

>>10924090
>I don't understand economics so we should all be hunter-gatherers.

>>10924100
>spoiling a good read with biased, opinionated word-spew

>>10924103
>majority of human history did not have a "labor market" but this thing that's existed for like one percent of all history is clearly permanent and clearly representative of some "truth"

man pseuds are fucking killing the internet

>>10924100
>you have to read this "intellectual's" 50 page foreword that didn't exist until 50 years ago even though the book is centuries old

>>10924106
>spoiling a potentially good read by not knowing the context in which it was written
People do this?

>>10924108
Dude you're the pseud jacking yourself off with this babies first Marxism shit after you listened to chapo traphouse.
"representative of some "truth"" what type of non-sequitor is that. The truth is it the case of things whether you like it or not

>actually reading forewords

lmao, does your mom chew your food as well?

>>10924136
I wish

>>10923845
>foreword spoils the book you're about to read
Thanks for pulling out that judge quote from a few hundred pages deep in the novel you fucker. Blood Meridian is the first foreword I've skipped.

>>10924089
>rights

>>10924144
nice dubs
nice taste in books
nice taste in not reading forewords

>>10924120
Not that guy but this is not an arguement

>>10924212
What argument is there to be made with a boy who did not make an argument, there's nothing to argue against

>>10924212
What argument is there to be made with a man who did not make an argument, there's nothing to argue against

>forward is written by a better author in better form than actual book
>enough so to stop reading it and look for the other author's work

>>10923900
every book published in Soviet Union ever

>>10924090
>strangely despite the british workers voting or brexit the brexit still isnt actually happening

>the foreword is an integral part of the story

Penguins The prince

>>10923888
What's wrong with comparing two writers who haven't read each other?

>>10923900
soviets commissioned walter benjamin to write an official encyclopedia article about goethe but rejected it because even for their taste it conainted too much marxist jargon.

>the foreword is circumcised

foreword told me to kill myself

>>10923888
Bloom wrote the foreward to Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism". He starts off talking about Frye, but halfway through the forward he switches to talking about himself and his theories. It's a riot.

>>10924588
Unless one of them influenced the other it is an awful way to analyse a book. Pointless and off the mark.

>>10923849
unabomber book

>>10924642
If the two books deal with the same themes or innovate in similar regards, comparing them can greatly improve your understanding of both works. Literature doesn't have to be approached and analyzed simply as a linear progression from one writer to the other.
I suspect your knowledge of literary studies is based on reading /lit/ shitposts

>>10923849
Mein Kampf

>The foreword completely spoils the ending of the book you haven't even read yet

>>10924831
>reading for the plot

>>10924831
Don't read the foreword before your first readthrough, brainlet

>>10924596
got a source on that

>>10924839
his moscow diary desu

>the foreword is a decently written historical introduction to the author's aims and influences, without pleb commentary on the arguments

>the afterword spends more time talking about a different book than the one you just read

>the foreword references like 15 books I've not read making me feel like a brainlet

>the afterword spoils a book you're currently also reading

>>10924866
Best post

>>10924835
Doesn´t apply for Pale fire, though.

>the foreword has much more depth and is better executed in style than the book itself

>>10924898
Basically Nietzsche's 1886 forword to birth of tragedy

> The foreword explains he did an awful job with the translation, and provides many examples

This really happened in my copy of Ulysses, should get one in English instead?

>>10924901
Applies for some versions of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, too.

What's the point of a foreword? I skip them 100% of the time.

>>10923920
its based on an entirely imagined, false anthropology

>>10924912
Did he say he did an awful job or did he say the book was just extremely difficult to translate?

>>10924954
Inflating my Goodreads statistics.

>>10924954
To give a perspective on the text. Sometimes when you reread something it can be nice to have certain points to focus on

>>10924966
Do you count the foreword as a separate book or something?

>>10923924
I remember reading this but I forgot where.

>>10924974
More pages mate.

>>10924994
Just read the large print editions

>>10923845

Never read anything in a book that wasn't written by the author.

EXCEPTION:- you can read something if it was written by another author whom you particularly admire. e.g.Ted Hughes wrote an introductory essay to Vasko Popa's poems. I like Ted Hughes and I like his absurd ranting so I read that. But in general, I don't read such things. In fact, I tear them out, masticate them savagely and use them to soundproof the walls of my reading cave.

>>10924106
>caring about spoilers
>reading for the plot

>>10924110
>that didn't exist until 50 years ago even though the book is centuries old
this is some next level brainletism

>>10924839
who cares it's amusing

>>10923849
Niebla

>Library copy of Beyond Good and Evil
>Foreword by Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth
>Someone scratched out the entire foreword with pen and wrote "Ignore this, his sister was a Nazi"

>>10926894
Kek

>>10923849
my copy of considerations on france does this

>>10924994
>>10924997
>couting read pages on goodreads
>the absolute state of /lit/

>>10926894
it was a good thing, he wasn’t a nazi

>>10923849
Freud's preface to the Karamazov Brothers.

>>10923849
A recent edition of The Seven-Storey Mountain.

Fucking annoying desu.

>>10924959
Atheists really have the worst political philosophy.

You’re wrong. The idea of civilization being corrupting is not wholly incorrect.

>foreward
>preface
>about the author
>translators note
>terms and conditions

Dave Eggers telling me how long and time consuming Infinite Jest is and how bored I will be by the descriptions of tennis in the foreword

>>10923849
Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual is A.E. Waite bitching about the author for roughly fifty pages.

>>10923845
>the foreword spoils the reveal
Don't read the foreword of Signet's Scarlet Pimpernel. Holy shit.

>the first 300 pages of the book are various notes, prologues, introductions, and transitions and are essential to understanding the work

>>10923849
>bock

>>10928303
>Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual is A.E. Waite bitching about the author for roughly fifty pages.
Waite couldn't deal with the fact that some super spoopy sekrit occultists accepted Levi into their private circle but excluded Waite. He couldn't get over it.

Very commendable that he put the time into translating these works for others, but it would've been great it he had left his jilted side-hoe energy out of it. There is a new translation by John Michael Greer, but it lacks the older tone and flavour of Waite. The footnotes are apparently far better, though.

>>10928365
>entire book is supplementary material to some other book

>>10923845
>entire front and back matters not included in the book because you were ordering them drunk again and bought one from a no-name publisher in some grandma's basement.

>what is Bertrand Russell’s introduction of the tractatus logico philosophicus

>>10923849
Five words: My diary desu

>Foreword is 30 pages of the most brainless analysis I've ever read
>At one point the author quotes all the colours mentioned in the book, followed by the emotions they represent, without providing the context in which the colour was mentioned or how the emotion relates to the book
>At least one spelling mistake per page; one page has 3 spelling mistakes in an 8-word sentence
>There's a run-on sentence that is a page and a half long because most of the time the author uses commas instead of full stops
>Googling the author returns a banned Quora account

>foreword labels some of the author's claims and theories 'problematic'

>there are roughly 55 forewards and prefaces

>>10923858
?

no he didnt

>>10928592
>>Googling the author returns a banned Quora account
That's incredible. Book?

>>10923849
Michel de Ghelderode's Spells has a foreword for the book as a whole, giving biographical detals and what not, but before the last story there is a second preface and it's to address the "anti-semitism" of said final story

>>10924596
Classic USSR

>>10924596
holy shit is this real either way my sides

>>10927027
Was it the edition that makes Merton seem like a bigot?

>foreword is enjoyable and informative
>page after it ends informs the reader that the foreword author died a year after writing it

>>10923849
The Signet Classics edition of the Communist Manifesto begins with something like, 'Why does Marxism always end in either failure or tragedy?"

>>10929303
based

>foreword shits on everything else the author wrote

>first sentence of foreword spoils the whole book

I literally never read the foreword, am I a brainlet?