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#I gen hate most of the creatures that populate booktok im not sorry
citrusotakutea · 1 month
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People that make it a joke to be like: "Omggg the introductions to classic books are soooo annoying, why would they put so much of this useless shit here?" after they only started reading classics to be a part of the pretentious booktok fucks who read classics just to say they read them... Hi, pretentious fuck who always reads the introduction... It is literalllyyy a free literary analysis you dipshits. If you're reading some abstract shit, well it was written that way and people have been trying to read and interpret it since it was published. There is 200% popular explanations or theories of the plot there, if not straight up quotes from an authors diary/notes on their process and intentions for writing their novel (if those were left behind by the author). Fun facts, relevant historical context, translation deep-dives (which are fucking great btw, translation is an art and even the best translations will always lose something) and more. Honestly, people bragging about not reading it is like. ok fine whatever. To call it useless is just indicative that you are a VITCIM of the media comprehension crisis. If you're just going to parrot some rando from tiktok who summarized the plot (badly) in fortnite terms (do not recommend) read the fkn intro instead. If you're not going to try analyze the book yourself, or if you don't know where to start- read the intro!!!111!!! I am old enough (21. sarcasm.) to remember the time when the media lit crisis was in full swing before Lolita blew up on tiktok where people were making the most bare bones, surface level interpretations of it, calling the author and people who liked the book pedophilic. Saying they didn't know why it was a classic because it was just some old man's sick fantasy. I'm pretty sure there are old arguments on this blog of me trying to explain it to people. Nabokov was very open about the true meaning of his novel, there were many resources for people on and offline, plus the book that I had (not special, from library and then one from B&N) had an intro AND author's note. Yet people only got it when it was oversimplified for them on tiktok? Introductions are literally some nerd who was so obsessed with the author/book that you're reading that they who wrote something (barely anything usually, not a fucking lot) to help you understand the book better. Obviously, its meant to be supplementary and you can and should find your own meaning. Plus, usually for compiled works, the introduction are the guy(s) who made the fucking book, but ofc they are only credited in the intro (& copyright page) because they didn't write it. Surprise, people actually have to pick what works go into those types of books. Intros are usually just: "wow, I love this author so much that I did research on their entire life, read every single word they left on this earth, read 50 decades of analysis of their works and researched the era they lived in to understand why and what they wrote the wrote better, " and you mfs that don't even read it call it useless. fuck you. Oh and before anyone with -80 IQ reads this and gets upset, if you want to avoid spoilers for the 103935405739 year old book, read it after you finish the book...
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