Re: Sequels (was Re: Universitatlity)

Jim writes:
<< Robbie, of course I know what's been preserved are copies, not originals.
And it seems a matter of common sense that the precious few texts that have
survived from antiquity were valued and considered worth preserving (or we
just got lucky -- I think the DSS are an example of incredible luck). >>

While the Dead Sea Scrolls are clearly a case of incredible luck, it remains
that we never would have had the opportunity for this particular stroke of
luck if not for the very high esteem that these particular scrolls enjoyed
in the Qumran community. They were preserved in clay pots and hidden in
caves.

<< None of these factors have much to do with our judgment of these works as
literature, though, especially in comparison with all the literature that's
been published since then. >>

Reading this sentence, it is not clear to me what you think I was
suggesting, but it seems that you've misunderstood me somehow.

I don't think that I was suggesting anything radical. I trust the worth of
literature that has held up to the scrutiny of time more than I trust the
worth of literature that has merely held up to the scrutiny of a generation
of critics and academians and trusted friends. Of course this leaves very
vague what I mean by "worth," but I take this to be whatever elusive quality
that is by virtue of which we treat Kafka differently from Stephen King. If
you think that I have no excuse for being so vague because it is very easy
to describe this quality of virtue in literature, or if you take it that the
nature of this quality has no continuity between Homer and Shakespeare and
me (and thus that a later generation is just as likely to see it in Stephen
King as in Kafka), then our prejudices differ in such a way that we will not
come to agreement about this; and a conversation aimed at exploring and
aligning our respective prejudices is not one that I have the time to engage
at present and in this forum.

<< The sheer volume of fiction being produced today, compared to the
relatively small volume of work that's lasted over 2000 years, seems like
the odds are in favor of the average work from antiquity being better than
the average work published today. >>

Agreed. Which is fact enough to justify my sole point in all of this.

<< But all these factors are aside from the exercise of our own judgment
upon the literature in question today. >>

Of course they are. And of course we can exercise our own judgment upon the
literature in question today. I can pick up a new book that is getting
great reviews (or not getting great reviews) and judge for myself.
Certainly. I never said otherwise.

But doing this, I often find that I've picked up a book that is poor, or
mediocre, or okay, or decent, or occasionally pretty good. Perhaps I will
be dazzled every once in a while, of course. But this whole process I'm
describing isn't so much fun for me, personally, that I care to devote to it
the time that it requires. (And certainly one of the books that I'm calling
poor or mediocre here might, by some other standard, be excellent -- I
certainly understand this, having once been enough a fan of schlocky
science-fiction -- but I'm saying poor or mediocre on that particular
spectrum that places Stephen King and Kafka near opposite poles, and I
expect you have some sense of what I'm talking about.)

But if instead of those books that are being highly esteemed at the moment I
spend time reading those books that have been highly esteemed (on the
King-Kafka spectrum, of course) rather consistently for the last 100 years,
or the last 500, or the last 2,500, I find that the experience tends to be
much more richly rewarding for me. Perhaps your experience is different;
this is mine.

<< I'm also aware, for example, of the long and complex history of
interpretation of the Odyssey. I'm also aware that the vast majority of
these interpretations weren't possible when the poem was composed.>>

Of course I am quite aware of readings of the Odyssey over the centuries,
and I'm sure we've been over this before. My appreciation of that history
is quite a bit more complex that what you describe here, though, and what
you describe here does not trouble me. If your point is that the Odyssey is
different for an ancient Greek reader than for me, of course I must agree.
It's different for me every time I read it. So much more different then,
for you, and so much more for Aristotle. And never quite the same twice,
even for the same reader. Agreed.

(I am wary of simply dismissals of what remains after these differences, but
that is beside the point here.)

<< The value of works like the Odyssey are their ability to be read and
reread, mapped and remapped, answering different questions every time, even
questions the original hearers would have never thought of asking. >>

I think that this is too simplistic an account of "the value" of works like
the Odyssey. If only it were as simple as that. . .

And I have long thought that the root of our difference in conversations
that this one is now edging up against has been what exactly we
(differently) refer to when we use words like "readings" and
"interpretations" and "meanings" et cetera. I have often suspected that you
were thinking of things that can be "mapped" onto texts (and I would likely
agree with you if I were talking about that). Such "mappings" can be
interesting, but I don't take them to be very substantive or essential, and
my interest in them is a somewhat trivial interest.

This came up a bit in an earlier conversation and I mentioned Tolkien's
distinction between allegory and applicability, which I take to be related
to this issue though not it exactly.

We're getting far afield, though, and sliding into an old conversation that
I don't have the time to have. I was only talking about my own reading
habits, which have been formed through my own experience, and why they are
sensible to me.

<<When I said that the Odyssey is essentially an episodic adventure story
wiht some subtext about fulfilled desire, I was taking a baseline reading
that, I suspect, is a good part of what lead to its initial high esteem to
begin with. >>

There are plenty of episodic adventure stories with subtexts of fulfilled
desire. I can't help but hear in almost all of your statements about the
Odyssey a dead and empty book. I see in Aristotle's and Montaigne's words
about the Odyssey (to give only two examples, both remote from me, as from
each other, in time and place) something that is exactly right -- I
understand right away, as GGM says in John O.'s quotation, despite
Aristotle's philosophical stance and Montaigne's wandering essaying. But in
your "baseline" reading and your more sophisticated ones (that apparently
change profoundly over time and in ways that could not have been anticipated
by ancient Greeks), I see what is to me either mundane or trivially
interesting. Perhaps they are cerebral in a way that what I'm talking about
is sensory. Of course, Aristotle and Montaigne are cerebral too, in their
own ways, though they share something with me that you don't seem to. I am
beginning to think that the only way to see eye-to-eye about this would be
to read the Odyssey together slowly, and then to base all further discussion
on our experience with that and on specifically cited discussions by other
readers throughout the centuries.

Again, though, we're quite far afield. . .

<< To answer most of the rest of your post, we'd have to engage in an
irresolvable discussion about what constitutes "good" or "great" literature,
much of it ultimately subjective, and even beyond that, what we think is
"worth our time" -- which is absolutely subjective. >>

What I mean by "good" and "great" in this context is relative placement on
that King-Kafka continuum. And while such placement is often hard to
pin-down, perhaps impossible to pin-down with great precision, I am
nevertheless inclined to think that it is a question for which there is a
right and a wrong answer.

And there was never a question, for me, about what was worth our time --
only what is worth MY time. This is a question that involves my own
preferences, but you will forgive me the hubris of considering myself a
competent judge on such matters as that. And that's all I was talking about
to begin with.

<<There are intelligent people out there that learn a lot about a culture by
reading its schlock, making even the crap worth their time.>>

Of course, and I was careful to point out from the beginning that there's
not a thing wrong with that. Further still, that there's not a thing wrong
with reading schlock for the pure love of it.

-Robbie
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Received on Sun Dec 14 04:29:28 2003