In the Here There

In a recent essay, "The Case for Never Reading the Book Jacket," Tajia Issen writes: "Rarely do I buy a book because I was seduced by the summary on the back or inside flap..." I share Issen's skepticism towards book jacket copy, but my attitude is slightly different. I try to read the book first, and when I'm finished reading it once, allow myself to read the blurbs and reviews to see what others say, and then go back to my reading, feeling alive in the ensemble of a plurality of exteriorized voices with different emphases of the same book. I thus believe the reader here could find it more useful if they read the books discussed before they read my essays about them."