Novel introductions are the cuckolds of the literary universe.
There is no greater joy than walking into a bookstore and picking up a new book. You find yourself excited at the prospect of something new, something you have yet to fully synthesize and digest. You’re at the threshold of a new understanding. You flip past the first few pages, still crisp and containing the aroma of ‘new book’, ignoring the copyright page and all the things that come before that first paragraph of text. You’ve gone through the foreplay—browsing the store, observing the covers, picking your poison. You reach the first real page, the one that contains substantial paragraphs, but find that it isn’t the novel itself. It’s the introduction.
That always ruins it for me.
My trauma with novel introductions began with David Cronenberg’s introduction to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I picked it up at the Downtown Central Library during my junior year of high school, not in preparation for any exam or class, but to understand literature that people called ‘classic’. Less than two pages into the introduction, Cronenberg spoiled the ending. In that instant, my sense of wonder, sprouted from the ambiguity and possibility of unfolding the text’s meaning, had disappeared. It turned the novel into a sterile text that I knew the points to.
Since that moment, I’ve refused to read introductions, especially when it comes to the classics.
That rule remained firm when I picked up The Awakening at Barnes & Noble, alongside the rest of the books required for the Maymester, in Santa Monica. The knowledge I had of Kate Chopin was limited from my work as a teaching assistant. Each school semester, I help prepare my class of seniors for their AP English Literature exams. One of our recurring texts is Chopin’s short story, The Kiss. The students are tasked with reading and annotating the story, then writing a thesis that responds to a prompt regarding the story. Yet, because the class only meets twice a month, and the grade they receive only impacts their standing in the program, I get the absolutely worst theses that don’t make any sense as to what is occurring in the actual story.
When I first exited the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport—or MSY, as I prefer to call it—with our group, I was hit with a wave of heavy, sickly heat. It was a reminder that summer had started, though I suppose that my Los Angeles upbringing had skewed my sense of what ‘summer’ felt like. As a late summer baby, you’d believe I’d love, or at least be used to, the heat. I grew up in apartments with subpar insulation that stops the cool air from the summer nights from coming in, making my home feel like an oven at night.
That morning, I had left home in a thick USC sweatshirt and black leggings, believing that I was capable of withstanding the under 90-degree heat of Louisiana. That frigid LA morning hadn’t prepared me for the smothering air. Arriving almost an hour later than scheduled, which had ruined the Houston Airport for me, I realized I was not prepared for what came next: a three-hour car ride with a pile of suitcases that preferred to topple over my head at every turn instead of remaining in a neat stack.
Still, I found myself unable to sleep on the ride. I watched Louisiana slowly transform from city to swamp, so unlike LA’s endless loop of houses, shops, and freeways. This place shifted from urban density into a raw rural landscape. The roads weren’t crowded with impatient drivers, not the ones that were too stupid to move forward and willing to hit you with their cars. There was space, stillness.
On our first full day at Grand Isle, we were given our first simple task: finish two thirds of The Awakening by the end of the day and finish it by our 5 p.m. seminar the next day. Here we were, surrounded by beach, tranquility, and the endless possibilities given by a new environment. You get so wrapped up in trying to experience Grand Isle and the limited time there that your brain tries to tell you to go, step on the beach, and get to know the people around you. But time was limited, and we all knew we had to read it.
Reading the novel in Grand Isle added an odd sense of dissonance. I struggled to map the novel’s world onto my own surroundings. Edna Pontellier’s Grand Isle was slow and romantic, painting a picture of pleasant summer evenings on the warm beach. The one I saw was cluttered with red seaweed that made you anxious to step on it, containing bits of washed-up garbage, and dense clouds that could almost trick you into believing that outside couldn’t possibly be that hot. The air was thick, unrelenting, enveloping you the second you stepped out of an air-conditioned space. No possibility of an Amazon delivery, or a quick bite at McDonald’s unless you wanted to drive 50 minutes away.
And yet, despite the environmental disconnect, I connected with Edna. I resisted the urge to look up a summary. Normally, I can’t help myself; if a movie or book moves slowly or is filled with flowery language, I will open the Wikipedia page without a second thought. But I held back. Edna’s internal state, her longing, her desire for complete autonomy—I knew it. While on Grand Isle, every day felt like I was waiting for something that never came, something that would propel me out of la-la-land and had me unable to fully relax. But it never did, regardless of that itch for transformation.
In Edna, I found myself enveloped by her similar feelings for longing and belonging, outside of my space in Grand Isle. It was the hope that you’d wake up and feel different, that your achievements would not only make you feel better but transform what you knew as life. That desperate desire for some accomplishment, some shift, that rewards you with the kind of happiness you’ve been looking for.
And somehow, this reminded me of why I don’t read introductions. I don’t want someone else’s interpretation shaping what I’m about to feel. I want the characters, the language, the setting, to meet me where I am. Knowing information and context about the author and the time in which the story was published is important to the understanding of the novel, but I don’t need it shoved and synthesized down my throat before I’ve read the first sentence. The Awakening didn’t need an introduction. It just needed space to reach me.