[Prestidigitweeze]

There are also cases in which an introduction or complimentary article so changes the meaning of the book that I feel the reader should experience the story on their own first.

Chinua Achebe is one of the greatest African writers of the twentieth century, and his introduction to Conrad's Heart of Darkness is important. But Conrad's novel is important, too, even though it is predicated on a racist idea of Otherness (in Edward Said's parlance). It deserves to be experienced as a work of fiction -- about an impressionistic idea of a demagogue given free reign on a remote continent -- before the debate about Conrad's understanding of race is ever raised.

In fact, the idea that Conrad is racist is so obvious, and so anachronistic, that I might ignore such an introduction which repeatedly pointed that out if someone other than Achebe had written it.

Focusing on such a thing at the beginning of a book -- before the reader has even experienced it -- is rather like reducing Tom Jones to the idea that Fielding was sexist. The same goes for De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater: Yes, his idea of Orientalism is practically a flash card for E. Said's thesis. But his style is still beautiful and his imagery is still haunting, and they are why we still read his books.

There's anti-Semitism in Shakespeare, but that doesn't make the rest of his writing any less great. It simply makes us wince en route to King Lear.