I don't read the intro or preface.
What if the author wrote it themselves
>>25579029There’s nothing outside the text
>>25579029The author often talks down to the reader in the introduction/preface, lecturing about the content like it's a college course. I don't let people talk to me that way.
>>25579028I don't read the book.
>>25579029No
i don read the phrasethe stylo and prose incisivity i dont mangle the linotationslick index, i don read the numericalsi don fucking read the audiobook
I don’t read
>>25579359We know.
>>25579028>read the introduction>introduction spoils key plot points and twistsJUST LET ME DISCOVER IT ON MY OWN REEEEEE
>>25579028I feel guilty if I don't. I think of myself as slovenly otherwise. mmm piggy piggy want story.
>>25579400The epic of Gilgamesh and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales collection did this : ( I did find out lots of interesting stuff about both books though.
>>25579028you have to let Mr. Schultz provide (((context)))
>>25579028I’ve read one decent forward and like 5 obnoxious ones that spoiled the books ending and several dozen that were so nondescript and pointless that I couldn’t tell you what any of them were about even if you put a gun to my head directly after reading one. It’s a grift, methinks. Publishers think they need to add something new to justify making a new edition of an already famous work and writers get to make a little profit shitting out a few pages about a writer infinitely better than them.
>>25579410I kinda understand if it’s folk tales or ancient mythology because you’ve had a millennia to get acquainted with these stories (since they’ve been told and retold in various forms so many times), but it makes absolutely no sense to do it for modern fiction.
>>25579426It depends. You can learn some interesting stuff. I learned a lot about Whitman thanks to the introduction and I find that for classics (especially religious stuff or epic poetry) it's necessary to understand the context that is introduced therein unless you're already aware of all those details. I wouldn't have really got the Zhuangzhi without the intro I read.
>>25579426I didn't know what a serial philanderer Charles Dickens was until I read it in the intros to his books, that nigga was slingin' dick left right and center.
>>25579029Those are unironically worse
>>25579028I do if it's written by someone that I think might have something interesting to say, but even then it mostly averages out to neutral. I don't think I've ever read a truly great intro/preface piece in my life. The vast majority I look at the name of the intro writer and skip straight to chapter 1. If it's a woman or a minority I simply ignore it totally, don't even bother to look them and their history/credentials up. If it's a white man I'll look up who they are an decide from there.>>25579029In this situation I agree with>>25579035 it becomes a lecture by the author on their work. Snore. Let the work speak for itself and I'll make my own mind up about it.
>>25579028I read it 50% of the time
>>25579426I think some of them (especially for older works) are done for copyright purposes. I have a feeling that the same is true for new translations...
>>25579028If I know the writer and like them, I give the intro/preface a shot. If I don't know them, I'll start reading it but usually give up if the style is bland or there's spoilers or it talks too fucking much about colonialism or something. Picrel is an example of an introduction I really enjoyed, which is not common.
For nonfiction I do, for fiction I don't. Simple as.
>>25579359I simply shitpost on /lit/
>>25579028>preface is the author emphatically static he DID read responses on reddit and YES he made a girlboss characters on purpose because of all the strong women in his life growing up
i was reading the intro to dorian grey at work just to get into it before i go home and read for real and it like spoils how he murders a dude like wtf i thought it was just about some gay guy doing freakier and freakier shit not killing dudes is this like the 19th century american psycho or what
>>25583605Spoiler dude! >gay guy doing freakier and freakier shitFuck! I thought so too. Now I really am going to read it.
>>25579028nor
>>25583789Nor.
i only read the intro because thats the only thing on my level when "starting with the greeks"
>>25583856"I don't read the intro Nor. the preface."
>>25579028
I don’t read the afterword
