cosina
"I think being a woman is like being Irish." — Iris Murdoch
Death by introduction
Tags: 
books
books I've read some boring books, so I know I have the reading power to hang on until the end, no matter how hard the author tries to shake me off. Even so, when I pick up a book, I look for the click of it fitting with something in me.
When I was going through my old blog, I found some excerpts from Eugene Walter's Milking The Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet -- a book I don't remember ever hearing about.
There was a preface by George Plimpton which was cute, but boilerplate: a curious character I knew in Paris and met in Italy on my way to Africa sort of thing. It had the look of something dashed off in an afternoon or pulled ready-made from a filing drawer. It was, however, brief...
... unlike the INTRODUCTION which followed.
You'd think, when a book is published, that someone at the company would look at these things, and take out the garden shears, then the pinking shears, then the nail scissors, to cut them down and trim them into shape. Lord!
If you ever happen to write an introduction, there is a cardinal rule, which according to the Cabbalists, God scribbled on the back of both sets of the ten commandments: The introduction is NOT the place to let yourself go. If you want to be long-winded, then go write your own damn book.
Back in college, a wise student observed: "You can tell how boring a class is by how soon you look at the clock."
Well, I read two pages of this so-called introduction, and then asked out loud, "How long is this thing?" How much is xxiii minus xi? That's an easy one! It's xiii pages -- xiii pages that I skipped. They will not be on the exam, by god.
When I was going through my old blog, I found some excerpts from Eugene Walter's Milking The Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet -- a book I don't remember ever hearing about.
There was a preface by George Plimpton which was cute, but boilerplate: a curious character I knew in Paris and met in Italy on my way to Africa sort of thing. It had the look of something dashed off in an afternoon or pulled ready-made from a filing drawer. It was, however, brief...
... unlike the INTRODUCTION which followed.
You'd think, when a book is published, that someone at the company would look at these things, and take out the garden shears, then the pinking shears, then the nail scissors, to cut them down and trim them into shape. Lord!
If you ever happen to write an introduction, there is a cardinal rule, which according to the Cabbalists, God scribbled on the back of both sets of the ten commandments: The introduction is NOT the place to let yourself go. If you want to be long-winded, then go write your own damn book.
Back in college, a wise student observed: "You can tell how boring a class is by how soon you look at the clock."
Well, I read two pages of this so-called introduction, and then asked out loud, "How long is this thing?" How much is xxiii minus xi? That's an easy one! It's xiii pages -- xiii pages that I skipped. They will not be on the exam, by god.
