I’ve just started on The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, and the introduction by Randall Jarrell gives away the entire plot, including the ending.
Not only that, but he keeps quoting particular scenes and talking about how we experience that scene, what we feel in that context, what information we have at that point, and I’m like “great yeah I’ll make sure to come back for your opinion in 450 pages when I actually encounter that line”.
I’ve seen this with so many books, it just baffles me. I have nothing against packaging an edition with a little companion text like this, but why not *put it at the end of the book*? At that point it would be valuable to read someone’s opinions on individual lines, scenes, character arcs. Not before I ever read a single line. An introduction should be an introduction, not an in-depth line by line analysis that also gives away the ending and every major plot point.
Is there any reason why publishers keep doing this? Have any of you gotten annoyed by this or am I alone in this? I don’t even mind the spoilers all *that* much, I just feel stupid reading a 20 page analysis of a novel I haven’t even started yet. Thoughts?
by ksarlathotep
2 Comments
I skip these 100% of the time. Partially because of what you’re complaining about, and partially because I usually couldn’t care less about what they have to say.
It can vary, sometimes the introduction can really enhance the reading, other times it’s annoying unless you’ve already read the book. I’ve come around on introductions based on what I like to read (some books are borderline incomprehensible without a framing lol) but I definitely get the frustration.