A Book of Common Praise

from “Introduction to a Book of Introductions”

                    Recently, hearing that I was to bring out a book of introductions—of all improbable things—one of my writer friends asked whether I didn’t feel ‘funny’ publishing a book so full of praise. I am, after all, and have long been, a practicing literary critic, someone whose business is to discriminate, assess, recommend, resist. Have I not often had, my friend went on, knowing the answer but persisting nonetheless, rather harsh or at least less than favorable things to say about a new book? Did I not, in fact, sometimes relish the prospect of saying no, whereas in a book of introductions, I would necessarily be saying, in ever so many ways, yes?

                    Well, surely, yes, I have often done, and with pleasure, the work of the critic. And yes, the work of the introducer is a different sort of thing. To ‘bring on’ a speaker at a public event, after all, is principally to assume the role of appreciator, evoker, describer. More than occasionally, it is to speak as lover. Where criticism is—or so I take it to be—disinterested, though full of conviction, introductions are an expression of one person’s enthusiastic commitment to the work of a writer an audience has assembled to hear.

                    No doubt a good introduction at a public event will contain elements of criticism, including discrimination and assessment. Presumably the enthusiast will have engaged the work of an author more or less disinterestedly before agreeing to offer an introduction. But it is clear that resistance—genuine, protracted resistance—is out of place in an introduction, and if resistance is wanted or missed in the pieces that follow, I can assure my reader that resistance was the last thing wanted in the events for which my introductions were originally conceived.