Never Judge a Book by Its Cover?

To whom it may concern:

Ted Bishop, a professor at the University of Alberta, wrote a book chronicling a motorcycle trip he made from Edmonton to Austin Texas (and back again - Just like a Hobbit - well if Hobbits rode motorcycles). While in Austin he did research on James Joyce's Ulysses. Among other things which he observed, what struck him most was the fact that the notes and questions left by previous owners in the various margins of the editions available to him (and apparently, the University of Texas at Austin has quite the collection of this work) varied greatly depending on the cover of the book and the various prefaces and introductions. He claims, as you'll see below, that all that preceded the text in a given edition of Ulysses colored the reader's expectations, and therefore his marginal remnants. 

Now, loving books myself, I've judged many a book by its binding, cover, paper (quality, thickness, AND color), age, and too many intangibles to mention. However, when I read this paragraph congealed from Bishop's careful research, I was astonished at it's truth.

"Seeing all these different editions together I was beginning to get a sense of how the physical book would change your reading of the text. I don't know the term yet, but what I was doing was reading the "paratext," the elements surrounding the text - cover art, blurbs, prefaces, introductions - all of those "thresholds," as the French critic Gerard Genette calls them, that we must cross before encountering the text itself. There is no such thing as a pure text; we always reach it through the paratext , and though we may try to ignore it, it shapes our reading. Who said, "Don't kjudge a book by its cover"? We always do. (Riding With Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books. Ted Bishop. 2006. W. W. Norton & Company. New York. p. 119).

Because of this paragraph alone, I now consciously attempt to begin reading a book at the first line of chapter 1 regardless of what precedes it. Of course, I must still see the cover, must still evaluate (at least when purchasing a copy) the quality of the paper if I expect it to last, and the myriad of other things related to the pure physicality of the volume itself. Thus, in many ways I don't always succeed. After all, we all know that often an author's best argument is in his prologue. So not being swayed by paratext material is hard under the best of conditions. Nevertheless, I thought I'd share this one caveat about reading which might have otherwise gone unobserved by readers like myself.

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe (and skip the paratext material!).