Bookends

Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction or, for that matter, read one. His answer is simple and simultaneously profound: “a hope of bringing pleasure for the reader.” Likewise, afterwords—they are all about the “pure love” of a work of art that has inspired, awakened, transformed the reader. Ultimately, as readers make their way through these pages, an argument emerges about the profound interrelation between reading and writing, and the irrelevance of distinctions between high and low, between genre and mainstream, to the power of literature.