He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
(Oscar Wilde)

Epigraphs.  You know the things.  Those – I had to stop myself from inserting the adjective ‘annoying’ here, which might have given away my own personal feelings regarding them ––little passages that are typically found at the start of chapters, or amongst the prelims of a book.  Often they will be a quotation from another book; sometimes a well-known phrase.  But, do you read them?

Of course, you are meant to read them, but that is not my question.  Do you read them?

I read a lot of crime fiction, and many writers of crime fiction seem particularly partial to including an epigraph before the start of each chapter.  Gladys Mitchell is a great one for an epigraph.  Do I read them?  No.  For me, they hold up the plot; only serve to delay that chapter’s advancement of the story.

While I can appreciate that a good epigraph might be in some way pertinent to the subsequent chapter, more often than not I find the epigraph just a means to show off; to reveal the writer’s extensive literary knowledge, such that they can effortlessly pluck out pithy snippets of the classics and liberally scatter them among their own work, subtly forming a link between themselves and the writing of an established giant.

Epigraphs.  I skip them, one and all.  Any short passage of text at the start of a chapter that is centred, italicised, and ends with an accreditation to a different author gets the big heave-ho from me.  Even when they are an extension of the fiction, as in Frank Herbert’s Dune, or directly relevant to the plot of the story, as in Edmond Rawson’s Death in Bora Bora, they still fail to engage me.  I want to read the current story, unadulterated by poetic obstacles and interruptions.

Of course, I could always go back and read all the epigraphs in one go, once I have finished reading the novel.  But why would anyone?  For me, this reveals their fundamental pointlessness.  I have Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable available to me if I want to indulge in this kind of reading.

© Fergus Longfellow

If you hadn’t guessed it, Fergus Longfellow finds epigraphs ‘annoying’.