One of the most important contents of any significant book is The Preface. A Preface is the story of the book, an author's apologia for ever thinking someone might read the book, and even the Preface. Why was this book written like this, at this time? Why should a reader take the time and effort to read it? Does it say anything new or different?
Yesterday Geetanjali Shree was the first Indian author to win the Booker Prize for her novel Tomb of Sand. In her acceptance speech (let's call it a spoken Preface) she explained her excitement that now a whole Hindi tradition of storytelling and literary art would now be showcased to the world. When writing the book she never dreamt for a moment that she might win any prize, let alone the International Booker.
"Behind me and this book lies a rich and flourishing literary tradition in Hindi, and in other South Asian languages. World literature will be the richer for knowing some of the finest writers in these languages," she said.
That will be reason enough to go looking for her novel.
But back to the written Preface. One of my particular interests is biblical exegesis, and biblical commentaries are one of the joys of my life. Over the past 50 years publishing of biblical commentaries in series has become a religious publishing phenomenon. One result of this is the to be expected paragraph in almost every Preface, explaining why yet another commentary on a document - say the Gospel of John - a text that has been exhaustively, minutely, and laboriously examined over two millennia and on which at any time there are a hundred volumes of commentary available - and that isn't including the multiplying kingdom of online resources.
What can be left to be said? Why rehash what's already out there. Qoheleth asks if there is anything new under the sun - he is also the impatient interrogator of authors and publishers about much study being a weariness to the flesh. Still, for those who are interested in such textual immersion, a well written Preface is a window into the mind of the writer and the justification for this further attempt to explain, explore and expound.
Now and again a writer leaves aside the scholarly seriousness and says "yah-boo" to convention. There are acknowledgements and thanks - sometimes a separate page from the Preface - but most often as the last context setting paragraphs. And so I come to what set me off on this post in the first place, a delightful debunking of this courteous practice of Acknowledgements. It comes in volume two of Donald Hagner's commentary on Matthew - I smirked admiringly when I read it.
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