[ SECRET POST #2237 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2237 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 113 secrets from Secret Submission Post #319.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

13. http://i49.tinypic.com/288mpox.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

That would require them paying someone to write the introduction. If it's a substantial introduction which really updates the material, they'd have to pay someone who knows the material independently of the work being introduced.

[(Anonymous)]

It's tricky with recent theory, because it's not like you can have another scholar come in and do an annotated version, or write a new intro and editorial. If you want new front-matter, you're pretty much relying upon the author hirself to write a new intro. Some academics are very good about that, and second and third editions of certain magna opera have been drastically revised or extended.

But it's time consuming, and doesn't pay all that well. And some publishing houses will look to the bottom line and reprint without bringing the author in for revisions at all.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) social progress moves faster than copyright law or a career in academic writing can keep up with sometimes.

[(Anonymous)]

Science fiction authors sometimes disclaim the material with a note about what advances have been made since then, but for the most part books that make use of horribly out of date concepts and ideas - the reader has to be aware that the ideas/concepts are no longer valid. :\

[insanenoodlyguy]

usually if somebody's doing an intro to a book... they like the book. Why does this surprise you?

[(Anonymous)]

It really isn't mandatory that you leave a comment on every thread, you know.

All the examples in the secret are academic crit from the past 50 years or so. Their intros are either going to be written by the author, or by an eminent scholar in the field. It's not about whether they like the book or not - the introduction will lay out the critical relevance of the work and it's current cultural context. OP's problem is that cultural context changes and the field moves on, but reprints don't reflect this. "Liking" the book hasn't much to do with anything.

[insanenoodlyguy]

I comment where I want, I won't where I don't.

Just cause I got a name and your a scaredy coward anon that doesn't stand behind what you say, that's not my problem.

[(Anonymous)]

I usually just check the original publication date of all non-fiction books I read. Gives you a general idea of how recent the ideas are, so you know to look around to see if there are more recent ones or not.

Depends on the field how effective that is, some move faster when overturning old theories/evidence, but it generally gives you a rough idea.

[aristh]

I just read Witch Cult in Western Europe, after reading Hutton's Triumph of the Moon, in which he debunks pretty much everything Murray has to say. And yet, if you'd just picked up the Murray book you could assume it was all gospel. So... this secret speaks to me. (Is it fandom, though?)

[(Anonymous)]

Triumph of the Moon is a fantastic book. I fangirl Hutton something fierce.

I think I need to go reread that now, along with the rest of his books in my library. I remember being wildly amused by the chapter about the Defense of Britain (I think that's what they called it) and also sad that no one quite understood why I was giggling.

[aristh]

Hutton is so sassy. I totally understand, I laughed a lot reading it too.

[kluify]

Probably because what parts of the book are 'outdated' would be contentious, and so any new edition with an introduction would be biased towards whatever theoretical slant the author of the introduction/re-publisher adheres to. And, if the point was updating the book, you may as well annotate the entire text rather than have a 30 page brief overview of what is wrong with it -especially when the introduction is there to 'introduce' the book, rather than indepthly analyse it.

So yeah, I think it makes a lot more sense to leave the criticism to other articles and books on the subject, rather than trying to ram it all into an intro.

[(Anonymous)]

I think introductions of the sort you're asking for are nice, but not necessary. More often than not, they're biased towards the latest fashionable theory anyway (which later gets debunked and then you've got an introduction that looks silly and you've got to write an entirely new one...).

These are theories, yes? So they're one way of looking at things. And then you go read other ways of looking at the same things. And you check the dates these were all written, and what they're written in response to, and whether other criticism has been written about these same texts already. Bam, comprehensive overview of the issues involved, and so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not a particular kind of criticism is still relevant today.

The secret reads to me like: someone please do all the work for me so I don't have to critically analyse these theories. Which misses the point of criticism entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

Some of the material in the books pictured is not merely inaccurate, but harmful. Germaine Greer still has a reputation as a groundbreaking warrior for women's rights, but she hated transgender people with a passion, something that passes without criticism in the current edition of The Female Eunuch. Rationale of the Dirty Joke is stuffed with outrageously offensive (mostly Freud-derived) assertions from start to finish, and yet the edition pictured hails the book as "the authoritative text on dirty jokes." Almost no one takes Legman seriously any longer, but the publisher's reluctance to acknowledge the myriad instances of what would probably be labeled concern trolling if uttered in an online forum is jarring. The problem isn't that readers refuse to conduct more than one text on any given topic; it's that poisonous material gets lionized without comment from those who print it.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Ahhh, okay. The wording of the original secret suggested to me that it's more of the *historical* inaccuracies OP wanted acknowledged, and that's something I still think just needs a little research.

But framed this way, the desire for an introduction makes a lot more sense. Perhaps something that points out the actively harmful positions a text takes? The bits that shouldn't be condoned, anyway - while leaving the rest to be argued about ad infinitum, as most of us who read criticism are apt to do... =P