>At 10:41 AM 10/28/02 -0800, darkelf wrote:
>
>>Hey Velociraptor and Kestrel:
>
>Straw, Darkelf!
>
>>Sorry for the delay.  I have an excuse... was getting married this weekend
>>(whee!  It's over!  and it went off hitchlessly!), so I was understandably
>>distracted...
>
>Hitchlessly?  But isn't the whole point to get hitched?
>
>I'm confused.
>
>But I've also been up since 5:30 in the aye yem, and stuffy-headed to boot.
>
>>Yes, but...literary criticism (the academic variety, in which I am
>trained) is
>>about language and how we achieve meaning in texts -- not just the words,
but
>>the imagery inherent in the words, the cultural inheritance of reader and
>>writer.
>
>How does that work when the reader and the writer come from radically
>different cultures?  I mean, I NEVER would have understood even 1/4 of THE
>SATANIC VERSES if I hadn't had the "Rosetta Stone" provided by Newsweek
>Magazine's contemporary interview with Salman Rushdie.
>
>So how does the general average reader hook into the cultural scene of the
>writer?
>
>Or do you consider that even necessary?
>
>(BTW, with that "Rosetta Stone" provided by Newsweek, I did enjoy the
book.)
>
>Ain't I just a bundle of questions, though!
>
>>> My problem comes in as... was it intended by the author? If it wasn't...
>the
>>> illustration is like the picture of the Madonna on the side of a barn.
You
>>> may see it, but that doesn't mean it's really there. The Emperor's new
>>> clothes.
>>
>>If I worried about an author's intention every time I read a text, I'd be
>
>>unable to comment on anything whose author is deceased.  That does not
>work.
>
>So why do some critics go on and on ad nauseum about "authorial
intent?"
>Are they just outgassing their own knowledge (or the appearance thereof)?
>
>>Author's intentions are not the Be All and End All of meaning for a text.
>Once
>>a text is published and out there for public consumption, all of us who
>read it
>>bring our own spins and interpretations to a text.
>
>AHA!  (Said with a Yiddish accent.)  So it doesn't even matter, when you
>get down to it.
>
>>A critic brings a lot more
>>stuff along for a reading, true, but we all interpret texts when we read.
>The
>>author cannot control the readings.
>
>A lot more, necessarily, or just different?  Might I bring not only some
>knowledge, as a graduate-degree-holding person and a widely-read person,
>but also a whole different packet of experience as someone who's been on
>out there Living Life and having done such things as military service and
>being a nurse and being a mommy and . . . ?  And how does my experience
>"stack up" to a critic's very different experience?
>
>>A critic does not inject into a text meaning that is not there at all (and
if
>>she does, she can and will be castigated for that), but rather picks apart
a
>>text to find layers to the apparent meaning.
>
>Isn't this apparent meaning at least in part determined by the critic's
>personal baggage?  I'm sure my baggage influences what I see in what I
>read.  Or a little weird esoteric bit of knowledge might have quite an
>impact, nu?
>
>
>>Just because someone does not see
>>what the critic does -- including the author - does not mean that what the
>>critic sees is not there.
>
>For him/her.  Just as the reader may see something entirely different, and
>it's just as "there" for the reader as something else is for
the critic, or
>another reader.
>
>I've had the experience of reading a book that my husband had enjoyed and
>gotten a lot out of, and found that to me it was the worst drivel to come
>down the pike, and morally questionable, too.  I don't think that makes my
>experience with it any less valid than my husband's, even though the result
>of the reading was entirely different.
>
>>Nor does the author's (un)intentional meaning take
>>precedence over a critic's... though neither does the critic's take
>precedence
>>over the author.  This is one of the cruxes of post modernism -- that
>authority
>>is decentralized, that meaning is not a monolithic thing, to be set by one
>>person or people.
>
>Um, then, why do we need critics?  
>
>
>
>>Particularly in our postmodern age, art of all sorts is horribly
>>self-conscious.  Texts certainly are, with authors playing with
>conventions and
>>consciously applying postmodern theories to their work.  One can read a
>>postmodern text without mediation, but one misses a great deal of what's
>there.
>
>Oh, shux, I'm sure I miss a great deal of "what's there" in
everything I
>read, but I'm equally sure I find something, or at least have the potential
>of finding something, that nobody else would find there, just because of my
>unique life experience.
>
>>> And I'm also aware that's just *some* critics... others would read it
and
>>> weigh it only for what's actually there, and skip the flashy display of
>>> education for the sake of proving you're educated.
>>
>>Therein lies the rub... because I, Critic A, see something in the text and
>>comment on it.  The author says it's not there, because she did not intend
it
>>to be.  Now... is it in the text, or isn't it?  What in a text is heavily
>>dependent on the reader, no?  And critics are also readers, no?
>
>As readers, really, are critics.  I mean, when I come across a book that I
>think is just the largest collection of egregious nonsense to come down the
>pike, and badly written to boot, I express my critique by flinging it
>against the wall!  (We need to paint the house . . . )
>
>Certainly there can be things in a work that the author didn't consciously
>intend to be there.  I don't think an author is on safe ground with
>contending, "If I didn't consciously intend it to be there, it ain't
>there."  But see below for my comments on when someone says
"I know you put
>that there, and you did it on purpose," when such is not the case.  That's
>a different kettle of Oobleck.
>
>>One can also note that authors, who are heavily invested in the text
itself,
>>have a great deal to gain by castigating critics and hoarding the supposed
>
>>authority over a text for themselves... mini-godhood.
>
>Well, yeah, there are some authors who are supreme egotists.  I've written
>lots of "fan" stories, and readers have told me about all
sorts of things
>they've gotten out of them, on their own (never mind the attribution
>wrangle alluded to above and expanded upon below). When they find these
>gems for themselves, and it gives them something to think about or have
>feelings about, I think it's neater than.  (Don't ask, "Neater
than what?"
>It comes from an expression my college housemates used.) 
>
>>This is, admittedly, a sore spot with me.
>
>It's a puzzling spot with me at times.
>
>>Lit Crit is all about critical
>>readings of texts and examining the ways texts achieve meaning.  That's
not
>>trivial, and it's not easy.
>
>No, it isn't.  And to put one's own view of something out there to be read
>and picked apart is not fun, at times.  It certainly is fun when a reader
>writes and says glowing things, however!  :=)
>
>I don't think serious criticism should be limited to the
"lit'rary" realm,
>either.  Popular literature as well as popular entertainment should be
>subjected to serious examination.  It's one of the ways society determines
>what is really worth keeping and what belongs in the trash heap.
>
>Though my own opinion is that MOST of popular culture these days is
>candidate for the trash heap!  (But that's my own personal grump.)
>
>>I don't care that the vast majority of the
>>universe does not find it interesting, or even particularly useful -
because
>>it's a niche field, and it's not practical in that 'will it earn money and
>make
>>material things' sort of way by which our society measures the worth of an
>>endeavor.  I don't worry about that.
>
>  Certainly it isn't the way to get rich!  I do think it's
>interesting for someone -- and I encourage Joe and Jane Doe to do it, too
>-- to examine a work and see what he or she can find in it, and share that
>with others.  I don't think it's very interesting when the critic (some of
>whom can also be supreme egotists, we do have to admit) states that THIS IS
>THE WAY IT IS and whosoever disagrees with me is just not worth bothering
>with.  We've seen that kind of attitude on both sides of the literary or
>artistic street.
>
>>I do get tired of defending the endeavor
>>as worthwhile at all - because I think critical thinking is terribly
>important,
>
>And God knows that there certainly isn't enough of it going on these days!
>
>I hope my comments haven't made you feel that you need to defend the
>endeavor.  I'm sincerely interested in the whole question, having done a
>criticism myself (albeit it was a television show, and who would argue that
>those are serious art?  ).
>
>
>I'm tickled to have this discussion here, too!
>
>>and I find it fascinating to dig and poke at a text to see what's
>happening on
>>as many layers as I can find.
>
>And more people should do that.  In fact, on an admittedly less
>academically rarefied and most likely much less a disciplined level as
>well, this is what media fans do to the "texts" of the shows
they are fans
>of.  And they find all kinds of meanings in them that one who was distanced
>from them would sit and stare and say, "How in the hell do they find ALL
>THAT in a TV show?"
>
>But isn't it so that whatever it is that speaks to us is providing a very
>personal message?  I can't stand some of the things that are and have in
>the past been on TV, but you know, there are people out there who have
>derived many positive lessons and made many positive connections because of
>them, because these programs (or books, or works of art) that irritate or
>bore the hell out of me have had something to say to a percentage of the
>population.
>
>I have to say I find that a fascinating phenomenon.  Dumbfounding, at
>times, but interesting.
>
>Could criticism be properly defined as "intelligent
examination?"  What IS
>the accepted professional definition, anyway?  Isn't that a good place to
>start understanding it?
>
>>I also get tired of the veiled assertion that
>>critics don't actually know anything (not saying I got any of that here,
>but my
>>gods and little fishes, I've heard it before).  We do. We know just as
>much, if
>>not more, about how texts work than the authors themselves sometimes.  But
>>because it's academic knowledge, it's trivialized.
>
>
>Or not understood because it is so specialized, and so far from "daily
>life" as most run-of-the-mill people live it.
>
>>The point (if there is one) is this: you may dislike what critics have to
>say,
>>you may think they are full of crap, and that's fine.  But it's not so
>fine to
>>insist that because someone (including the author) cannot see in the text
>what
>>the critic sees that the critic is, therefore wrong.
>
>True.  There's a mate to that shoe for the other foot, however.
>
>A local writing group I belonged to decided that we'd each write a
>short-short story for Florida State University's "sudden
fiction" contest
>one year.  One group member, a friend of mine, insisted that I had PUT INTO
>the text of my effort the thing that she saw, and had done it
>intentionally, when I had not.  If she had said something like "this is
>what I found in it," I don't think that would have bothered me.
>
>No, it wasn't wrong for her to have seen that, and it was an interesting
>bit of traditional lore that she was referring to, and kind of neat.  I
>just really hated it when she said I had had the original intention of
>putting that in there, and I had not.  I had not encountered the legend she
>was referring to before writing that story, but she insisted that I must
>have and had deliberately put that in the story, when I hadn't.  I suppose
>it's possible that I had read of that legend decades before and forgotten,
>consciously, about it and it had hung around my subconscious and just
>emerged; but I didn't do it deliberately, and her assertion that I had was
>annoying.  I had absolutely no memory of having encountered that legend
>prior to writing the story, and it's just as possible that I had never
>heard of it before. Perhaps because she seemed to be implying that I was
>too stupid to have thought the thing up on my own, and HAD to have relied
>on the old legend, it bothered me admittedly more than it should have.
>
>
>
>I suppose that sounds like a personal problem, but it seems relevant to me,
>that critics (whether professional or amateur) are on dangerous ground when
>they attribute to the author (to the author's face, at that) something that
>wasn't at all contemplated.  FINDING it there on your own because of your
>own experience is one thing; saying that the author deliberately put it
>there when the critic has no such knowledge is quite another.
>
>Am I making any sense at all?
>
>>-darkelf, stepping of the soapbox now
>
>Well, thank you for getting up there!  What an interesting discussion this
is.
>
>And again, congratulations, and I wish you decades of connubial bliss.
>
>Or at least a helluva lot of fun.
>
>Veloci--enjoyed the talk--raptor
>

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