I solemnly swear never again to read the introduction before I read the book.

[tenlittlebullets]

Usually if I pick up a book that has an introduction, I'll skim it before I read the book, because sometimes they have useful context about the period the book was published in or its subsequent literary impact or both. Lately, though, I've been subjected to a string of absolutely horrible ones--from the pretentious mess of theory that preceded La fille aux yeux d'or and was nearly a third the length of the story(!) to the outright dissing of La dame aux camélias that made me wonder if the editor was actively trying to keep people from buying copies of the schlocky, trashy melodrama he deigned to associate his name with--and so really I should have known better than to flip through the introduction of the nice shiny bilingual copy of Faust that arrived in the mail today. And I really should have known better after the translator/editor kept referencing his own works and talking more about Nietzsche and German-ness than about, y'know, Goethe.

All the same, I couldn't quite keep my jaw from dropping open in shock when, in the process of making subtly disparaging comments about his fellow academics, this guy managed to slip in a veiled homophobic barb against some poor sod--and made it look so innocuous that I wouldn't have caught it if I hadn't been rereading Graham Robb's Strangers and had the Heine-Platen scandal fresh in my mind. It was framed as "Yeah I totally fanboy Heine, and hur hur this one guy hates Heine but only 'cause he thinks he was too hard on Platen (and we all know this particular fellow resembled Platen in terms of his works as well as his personal life)." Which... well, the great literary scandal of 1829 was when Heine outed Platen in a vicious screed about how Platen was a filthy sodomite and his "Romantic Oedipus" character should've killed his mother and married his father. It's since sunk into obscurity, making it perfect for coded references to The Gay that only fellow academics will understand.

So yeah, really classy remark.

Ugh, now I almost don't want to read Faust--or rather, I don't want to read this tremendous douchebag's translation of it.

Comments

[brittlesmile.livejournal.com]

How aggravating. My general rule for introductions is to only read them first if written by the author, though it arose from a desire to avoid spoilers rather than circumstances such as yours.

[endofthewest.livejournal.com]

Oh that is a dick move. :[

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

For serious. It was written in 1960, so I'd be willing to cut him some slack for not being Down With The Gay, but even with appropriate slack cut... you just do not do that.

[necrocomiccon.livejournal.com]

I may end up making the same resolution, myself - you might recall my dissatisfaction with the introduction to my copy of George Sand's "Story of My Life"! The author of that introduction bordered on actually calling Sand's beliefs "too idealistic". George Sand, too idealistic? Really? :P

[josiana.livejournal.com]

How tacky of him. :(