/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13250167]

>introduction calls the book bad

[Anonymous No.13250174]

>>13250167
Give me three (3) examples

[Anonymous No.13250180]

>>13250174
Mein Kampf

[Anonymous No.13250181]

>>13250174
came to post this. i can think of at least one, but i won't name it because I want to see if it ends up in OP's response

[Anonymous No.13250196]

>>13250174
Pretty much any ancient book has some overlong intro which contains a section explaining why the book sucks. Epicteus discourses had an intro where he said the book should be abandoned. I and Thou by Martin Buber has a 60 page intro highlighting things Buber "got wrong." I have an ebook of Plato where the introductions are full on analysis criticizing and even mocking the dialogues. I could go on.

[Anonymous No.13250201]

>>13250174
OWC KJV

[Anonymous No.13250238]

>>13250167
>reading introductions
I seriously hope no one ever does this. Intros always spoil the book before you've even started reading it.
I remember reading the Idiot and reading the into and it blatantly spoiling the ending. Never again.

[Anonymous No.13250263]

>>13250196
I'm surprised (and intrigued) by the notion of a modern scholar openly making fun of someone as 'canonical' as Plato. There was a time in Western history in which that would've required serious balls.

One example I've come across is the Emile of Rousseau. The edition I read (I believe it was either Everyman's Classics or Tuttle) has an intro that beings with "Rousseau was a not a great thinker." I remember thinking: lol, alright then, case closed

They say that (most) intros to classic and/or public domains works are a way for the publishing house to throw their out-of-work authors a gig: "Write this 30 page opinion piece that no one will read and we'll throw you $100 to keep the lights on." I only read intros about half the time - a few, like David Goldfarb's preface to Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (from the B&N classics edition) actually include some good insights, and serve as adequate contextual primers to the book.

[Anonymous No.13250498]

>>13250174
Anything by Lemony Snicket

[Anonymous No.13250519]

>>13250174
>The manuscript [The German Ideology], two large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia when we were informed that owing to changed circumstances it could not be printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly.

[Anonymous No.13250706]

>>13250174
The foward for my version of Thus spoke Zaruthustra spends much if the time calling the book "childish" and "lacking rigor" even going as far to say that it is "shockingly bad at parts." It also calls Ulysses too long the fuck out of nowhere

[Anonymous No.13250714]

>>13250174
Not OP but I came across this the other week and was SEETHING. I won't post what it was.
>>13250238
>not wanting historical/cultural context
confirmed for only reading dystopian YA

[Anonymous No.13250797]

>>13250174
Nietzsche's intro to birth of tragedy

[Anonymous No.13250840]

>>13250238
Stick to Game of Thrones kiddo

[Anonymous No.13250842]

>>13250706
>>13250797
In particular I have always felt
obliged to disregard any intros by Elisabeth Nietzsche. She was a charlatan and a fool.

[Anonymous No.13250964]

>>13250174
I have a Huysmans' À Rebours translation with an introduction that calls the book and the author's style boring at least thrice.

[Anonymous No.13250976]

>Introduction is written by some fag academic who interprets the book in some absurd way not supported by the text at all for job security

[Anonymous No.13250983]

>Introduction spoils the book
Do they expect me to read the introduction last? What the fuck do they mean by this

[Anonymous No.13250997]

>>13250976
>when you realize a good portion of theory you’ve learned so far is canonized bullshit written for job security (~not wanting to get a job)

[Anonymous No.13251002]

>>13250174
At first I had a hard time thinking of one but then I remember that the intro to either the Oxford or the Penguin edition of Count of Monte Christo calls it overly long, filled with padding, badly styled etc.

[Anonymous No.13251004]

>>13250174
Penguin edition of Theogyny spends 90% of it's time apologizing for how shit it is.

[Anonymous No.13251006]

>>13250983
That’s what I do. A proper introduction wouldn’t spoil though, it’s their fault for not being able to give context/general criticism (which is bullshit anyway) without spoilers.

[Anonymous No.13251070]

>not skipping everything the original author didn't write

[Anonymous No.13251126]

>>13251070
>not skipping the whole book
fucking fags letting "authors" influence their thought

[Anonymous No.13251199]

>>>13250238
>>not wanting historical/cultural context
Read it at the end then, faggot. Are you too much of a retard to form your own opinion on a work before eating someone elses?

[Anonymous No.13251211]

>>13250174
My diary desu

[Anonymous No.13251261]

>>13250167
Dumb frogposter

[Anonymous No.13251384]

>>13250964
what a crap intro then my friend, find a better version

[Anonymous No.13251493]

>>13251199
I do read it at the end. If I'm reading a book then chances are I know what the background is and the context of it. I'm pretty selective in what I read.

[Anonymous No.13251504]

>>13250714
>>not wanting historical/cultural context
>not being a strict formalist
Yikes!

[Anonymous No.13251510]

>>13250174
the Pynchon short story book is basically prefaced with him telling you not to read it

[Anonymous No.13252167]

>>13250263
Are you kidding? It’s practically a staple of modern scholarship now to emphasize how much more wise and enlightened we supposedly are than these ancient writers, highlight where they’re “unscientific” and “backwards” and knowingly wink and giggle to the reader.

[Anonymous No.13252193]

>>13251126
A Marxist wrote this

[Anonymous No.13252642]

>>13250174
most introductions to tolstoy’s later short works criticize his moral lessons, most baselessly in regards to the kreutzer sonata - the worst i’ve read is doris lessing’s introduction to it

[Anonymous No.13252657]

Achebe calls heart of darkness bad in the intro

[Anonymous No.13252674]

>>13250174
Clockwork Orange

[Anonymous No.13252677]

>>13252193
True. I’ve never encountered or observed a Marxist who had actually read more than a few pages of Marx. I know they exist but they are few and far between.

[Anonymous No.13252779]

>>13252167
Have you read anything in the last like, 40 years? That was certainly the norm any time before the 60s, both with old books as with any books from non-western people, but today everybody is all about equivocating between their forms of knowing and our own. Everybody is scared shitless to suggest that we today might be in a superior position of knowledge to anybody else in any other time or place.

[Anonymous No.13254031]

>>13251004
My classics lecturer this semester did this for the theogony aswell basically. Seems like half of what we talked about was how much hesiod hates women.

[Anonymous No.13254765]

>>13250167
>Introduction pleads with the author to end their literary career and hopefully their life.

[Anonymous No.13254971]

>>13254765
what book

[Anonymous No.13254996]

>>13250840

Name and discuss one (1) time when an introduction gave you valuable insight that made reading the work a better experience.

Actually I bet you barely read at all

[Anonymous No.13255019]

>>13254765

[Anonymous No.13255073]

>>13250174
Communist manifesto

[Anonymous No.13255110]

>>13250174
The Birth of Tragedy

[Anonymous No.13255112]

>>13251004
theogony is pretty boring tho

[Anonymous No.13255401]

>>13250174
Montaigne’s Essays. He suggests the reader not continue since the subject matter (his own life) is probably of no interest.

[Anonymous No.13255905]

>>13250964
>>13251384
I broke out this version, translated by Robert Baldick, to check if it was that version - it wasn't

[Anonymous No.13256089]

>>13255905
It's a Russian translation from 1990 and now that I check it, it's not literally 'boring', but 'uninteresting' and 'hard to read'.

[Anonymous No.13256574]

>>13256089
if the intro was by the translator himself, that would be a terrible self-indictment. but if the translation is actually bad - as "hard to read" was included among the criticisms - then there's no helping it.
that said, the substance of the book was probably well outside the intro-writer's sensibilities anyway. it would be for a lot of people.
for what it's worth, the English translation I posted succeeds in capturing enough of the original's greatness to have made me re-read it - and the introduction doesn't condescend to the work it's describing.

[Anonymous No.13256602]

>>13254996
Not him, but Machiavelli's The Prince.

[Anonymous No.13256611]

>>13251002
this

it also sneakily mentions it's a children's book

[Anonymous No.13256621]

>>13252677
So you've never encountered or observed a Marxist is what you're saying?

[Anonymous No.13256985]

>introduction is just the translator shitting all over previous translations of the work
>first paragraph is the author making fun of bad translations of other books
>whole premise of the book is the bilingual translator who constantly drops phrases in other languages for middlebrow pussy is in fact a disgusting and deviant pedophile deep down
Based nabby.

[Anonymous No.13257022]

One of the Penguin books compiling the plays of Euripides has its introduction almost completely dedicated to telling the reader how misogynistic his plays are. There's a misogyny warning in either the penguin or the oxford version of one of Nietzsche's works, too, I think.

[Anonymous No.13257140]

>>13250174
Cambridge edition of Outlines of Scepticism calls Sextus a quack.
The cambridge intro for Beyond Good and Evil says it does not deserve its status as a great work of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.13257699]

>>13250174
Most books by DWEM, and they are usually written by women. I remember one intro to Kipling's Jungle Books that explained how politcally impossible and bad Kipling is, and then expressed confusion as to why people still love his works.

[Anonymous No.13258822]

>>13250167
The Temptation to Exist by E.M. Cioran has an introduction written by Susan Sontag who passive-aggressively shits on the book throughout. It was infuriating to read, I don't know what she was selected to write the introduction.
I looked up her wikipedia page afterwards and found this delightful quote: "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone". Why is a person like this selected? I don't get it.

[Anonymous No.13258836]

>>13258822
>Why is a person like this selected? I don't get it.
She was chosen because she would reliably write such an introduction. It is little mystery why this is so. You are just denying what you already know to be true.

[Anonymous No.13258851]

>>13258836
It was a rhetorical question so the reader can work it out for themselves. We can't spoon-feed all those lurkers now can we?

[Anonymous No.13258855]

>>13258822
>The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone
dat projection

[Anonymous No.13258881]

>>13258851
OK, fren. Apparently it is sleepy time for me. Gute Nacht.