In mid-August, academic Leigh Claire La Berge posed a question on X about epigraphs: “do [they] ever work?” While she enjoys “finding them and dropping them in [her] prose,” the post continued, rarely does she like them as a reader. Epigraphs—the short quotes that preface a book or chapter and invoke its theme—attract a volume and intensity of discourse that belie the device’s small stature. Predictably, the responses to La Berge’s post were swift and impassioned. People defended their use of epigraphs, lamented their existence, and cursed the things for being so expensive—“I still regret those 11 overpriced words I once bought from the Graham Greene estate,” said one disgruntled writer. The accusation self-indulgent was slung more than once. The only clear throughline to emerge seemed to be that “Do they or don’t they work?” was too neat a question.
When pressed to describe what an epigraph does, writers tend to reach for metaphor. In her newsletter Before and After the Book Deal, Courtney Maum calls them, decadently, “apéritifs” and “a spritz of fragrance in a large room.” Thomas Swick conjures grandiosity in Literary Hub: an epigraph is “a ceremonial gate ushering us into the realm of the author,” a book devoid of one “a man in a suit who’s not wearing a tie.” Carmine Starnino, editor-in-chief of The Walrus, is more concise in a 2010 issue of Poetry magazine—epigraphs are “emoticons,” he sniffs; “a curio” that deserves “a little more judiciousness” when a writer ponders whether or not to include it. “They’re like the salt on yer chips!” reads one characterful reply to La Berge’s question.
Such imagery is evocative. But the lack of consensus feels too convenient. Put these metaphors together and they tell you nothing at all. Amid this tangle of language is a confusion of aims. Are epigraphs optional? Compulsory? Decorative? Are they a matter of etiquette? Taste? Smell?
This aesthetic instability is compounded by a legal one. In the United States and Canada, if a writer wants to quote from a work that is still covered by copyright, they must obtain permission from the rights holder—or pay a fee. If cost is prohibitive, a writer might not get the epigraph(s) they want. As some of the writers replying to La Berge’s post contended, price may be outsized relative to the epigraph’s function, which is not for analysis or explication, just vibes. (If the quotation were explicated in the text, it would be covered by the defence of fair use in the US and fair dealing in Canada.) But writers don’t want to be on the hook for explaining their epigraphs. It’s like the famous editor Gordon Lish used to say about writing and sex—you don’t narrate every single step of what you plan to do to someone. (Unless that’s your thing.) You just do it.
Among readers, the conversation about epigraphs cuts along different lines. A number of Reddit threads invite people to share their favourite epigraphs, a testament to the device’s significance—choose the right one and it can inform the reading experience meaningfully enough that people collect the ones that stay with them. In some threads, readers even express a desire for more epigraphs, an “incredible tool that goes unused by authors.” (If only they knew the struggle!) Others, not unfairly, dismiss the quotes as pointless and forgettable. Perhaps there’s even a type of reader who, if they crack open a book and do not like the epigraph they see, will—the horror—put the thing down altogether.
But all this hand wringing misses the point. Epigraphs aren’t self-indulgent, unhelpful, and expensive because of any inherent failures of the device itself or even due to ambiguities in the law. It’s because we’ve been letting authors get away with too much. Both the legal and aesthetic issues would be easily resolved if we held usage to a higher standard. For a device that has been given pride of place at the front of so many published books, shouldn’t the answer to Does it work? simply be an unqualified Yes?
Let me be the first to admit that I am not immune to these pitfalls. The task of choosing quotes inspires a giddy indiscipline, a chance to show off what you hope the book will do and who your work is in conversation with. In a publication process where every decision about a book feels so high stakes and irrevocable—and many of them are—of course we obsess over striking the perfect first note. “How many book epigraphs is too many?” I asked the void only a couple months before La Berge did. Mostly, I was looking for an enabler who would say the highest number. But I was also in the throes of excitement about my current project. An epigraph felt like the first, best way to get the reader as fired up about the book as I was, beguiling them into exploring the contents without forcing them to think too much before they’d even started. To throw in my own metaphors, I want quotes that land somewhere between a welcome mat and a crooked, come-hither finger—to tempt the reader but also to reassure them that they’ll be taken care of.
Like any greedy writer, as I do my research, I sometimes feel a sort of internal ping that tells me I have stumbled across a prospective epigraph. At first, I wrote this off as narcissism—of course I would want to open my book with a line by Jacques Lacan—but the more it happens, the more I have come to rely on it as a barometer for the sharpness of my thesis. The more efficient I become at assessing relevant versus irrelevant, the more clearly I am able to map out my own mind. I have encountered so many prospective epigraphs that I’ve started to keep a running list. This does not mean that I am going to use them all—I don’t think I can afford to, for one, nor would I inflict that on my reader. But it has become an invaluable part of my process, one that allows me to focus on the epigraph’s true beneficiary—the reader. Do they ever work? is only the first question. The second, more important one is: Work for whom? If you’re at a party and some dude isn’t wearing a tie, who cares? Among the underdressed are some of my favourite books—Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Even Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend wears no tie. I plucked these three books off my shelf in succession and found them all unadorned—and no less arresting for it. I hadn’t recalled the absence of epigraphs at all.
The pleasure the epigraph is meant to fulfill is not the writer’s own. Recall that La Berge, in her initial post, found epigraphs more fun when she was writing books than reading them. This suggests a general failure of the intended goal, letting down the very person the book is intended to serve. It doesn’t matter whether the epigraph is an aperitif or a ceremonial gate—no matter how delicious the metaphor, the thing loses all its charm if it doesn’t even contemplate how it might strike a reader. One man’s spritz of fragrance is another man’s allergy attack.
