Don't get me wrong. Nothing gets me hard like reading some arduously translated, loquacious account of how the margins, or what is not said, in a text holds some philosophical insight not only into the writer's soul but into an ideological reality of things. And, (yes, I'm starting a sentence with a conjunction) I have found myself in an accredited English program reading more of what people think about written works than the written works themselves. How have academics made a career of showing people what's really important about what they read? Even Stanley Fish's contribution to Reader-Response criticism is guilty of over thinking how people read. The meaning of a text is a result of a reader's participation with it. Of course, he goes into much broader detail than this, but is is somewhat commonsense, isn't it? People read books and make what they will of it. I suppose criticism is just one more example of this.
I suppose I'm realizing more and more that I don't necessarily care about half the shit that critics think. It's a battlefield. If Stanley Fish is right about meaning being a product of interpretive communities (ie I identify a main character in some text as a champion of Catholicism simply because I grew up in the Church-which is the interpretive community that has laid hands, so to speak, on my imagination) than criticism turns into class struggle. Perhaps my Marxist communal interpretation is showing. Nevertheless, why fight? Is it possible to write anything of substance if I'm concerned about how things will be interpreted? Is creativity or art or beauty of any kind furthered by pointing out that a Nobel Prize winner is an example of Freud's Oedipal complex? Read Freud than! I can't help but wonder if the goal of fiction isn't to inspire grandiose critical speculations on fiction, but to inspire more fiction. I can't imagine Milton or Faulkner getting some perverse satisfaction from a smart guy associating their work with some other smart guy's writing. I don't know.
Perhaps I'm getting frustrated with my end-of-the-semester projects.
We've talked a little about this before. I think the whole point of literature is that you can't simply take it apart, examine the pieces, and come up with What It Means. A story or novel can't be translated into an essay any more than a painting can. That doesn't mean literary criticism has no value; it does mean that *much* of it has no value, though. A good critic isn't just a collector of literary odds and ends or a pseudo-psychoanalyst. He has to be a master of the art of reading, and that's rare.
ReplyDeleteI think its hard, especially for critics, to master the art of reading without letting themselves take the spotlight in their criticism. For the record, Jorge Luis Borges writes wonderful reviews of literary works. At the same time, his fiction demonstrates his close reading more than anything else. Jonathon, who posted on my fb wall, suggested that criticism becomes its own fiction. Both of your comments have been reassuring.
ReplyDeleteIs the point that we can't continue to look for definitive points? Or is that too dangerous a proposition to make? Too nihilistic? Or is it nihilistic at all? Perhaps it the ultimate freedom, the ultimate responsibility, the ultimate act of creation in the void that we cannot know? What then does literature do? What is to say anything does? To what extent? What would be the measure of it's doing? But to say even that is to presume an entire structure in which acts are progressive. Can we make that assumption? Must we make it? How then to proceed? To proceed, to go forward, yet again my words are implying a temporal structure that is always moving forward and always presupposing subject object relations that my writing, no my thinking, cannot escape.
ReplyDeleteCan't get too caught up in it is all. Very serious questions, but even serious men have to take a shit sometimes.
there is no difference between writing and reading. i think cixous makes a few remarks to that effect. if poetry is defined by its ever-changing interpretability (as rorty would say) then i think it is perhaps best to think of all writing and reading as poetry. that is why i've decided to account for the importance of the creative experience of my writing by titling everything i write as a poem.
ReplyDeletewhen i look from this perspective i am much happier with my chosen career, and with the reasons why i do what i do.
I think that is the difference between Derrida (yay in the face we are free to play and create, spiraling off something new every time) and Heidegger ( we stare and the void and no that there is no play. It is a horrible burden).
ReplyDeleteNeil said, "I think its hard, especially for critics, to master the art of reading without letting themselves take the spotlight in their criticism."
ReplyDeleteMy dislike of Christopher Hitchens goes back to the days when he and Florence King were both writing book reviews for New York Newsday. King wrote excellent reviews that gave you a very good sense of the books she was reviewing. Every review Hitchens wrote was primarily about Hitchens.
Robertson Davies wrote great reviews, too. It can be done, and often is done. But not as often as one would like.
I think there is a degree of being involved in a book that allows for honest reflection, but the temptation to get distracted by our own concerns or muse-ings is very great. I was perusing through Newsday (after reading thedv8's post) and found a good book review that shows some healthy reflections on distraction in today's cyber age. He doesn't blame technology, which is refreshing. But, he does suggest that we may not be "reading" anymore.
ReplyDelete