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Nothing makes you glad you didn't go to grad school...
...like reading an introduction to a famous literary work. Even a very good introduction.
"The idea of that payment to Dupin echoing a real-life bribe to Poe seems on its face far-fetched (though less so than one writer's later suggestion that Poe himself was the "swarthy" gentleman who murdered Mary Rogers)." --Matthew Pearl
...That sounds surprisingly biographical for academic literary criticism. But it's not more absurd than a lot of critical theory.
(It spoiled the plots, like all introductions [the authors of introductions appear to believe either that they are actually writing afterwords or that everyone, or everyone important, already knows this anyway], but I read it after the stories, so that was okay.)
"The idea of that payment to Dupin echoing a real-life bribe to Poe seems on its face far-fetched (though less so than one writer's later suggestion that Poe himself was the "swarthy" gentleman who murdered Mary Rogers)." --Matthew Pearl
...That sounds surprisingly biographical for academic literary criticism. But it's not more absurd than a lot of critical theory.
(It spoiled the plots, like all introductions [the authors of introductions appear to believe either that they are actually writing afterwords or that everyone, or everyone important, already knows this anyway], but I read it after the stories, so that was okay.)