violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)
[personal profile] violsva
...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.)

Date: 2012-06-20 08:10 am (UTC)
enemyofperfect: a spray of orange leaves against a muted background (Default)
From: [personal profile] enemyofperfect
I hate that about introductions! Or at least, I did hate it, before I learned never to read them until afterwards.

It's always a little disorienting to encounter one that actually would have been safe to read first.

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