Re: Mr. Antolini

AntiUtopia@aol.com
Thu, 04 Dec 1997 14:39:10 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 97-12-04 13:19:22 EST, the.tourist@mailexcite.com writes:

<< I was also thinking about the middle ground between sexual abuse and
parental love.
  I think when an adult falls in love with a child, falls in between those
two extremes,
 the affection in itself is not bad, although that sort of idealization comes
from
 a co-dependent environment... 
 The problem starts when adults try to express that love.  The best way
humans know
 to express love is physically--and while it may appear innocent to the
adult, any
 sexualization of children, as we know, is abuse.>>

Yah, I agree, sexualization of children is child abuse.  But not all physical
expressions of affection are sexual.
 
 <<Of course Antolini was left ambiguous purposefully...I don't deny that for
a moment.
  But I also believe that Salinger had a very deliberate reason for
everything he
 did--and that he understood his characters and their motives--ever the minor
characters
 better than most writers understand their main characters.
 
 Whether or not we are supposed to Find Out Exactly What Salinger Meant, I
believe
 he meant Something in particular, and it is important to me to discover What
that
 is.
 
 Brendan  >>

This kinda gets into literary theory.  Older forms of literary
criticism--say, formalism--would say the ambiguity is itself the meaning.
 So, the Something in Particular communicated by the work may be ambiguity
itself.  In Deconstruction, ambiguity plays a different role, something
destructive to the meaning we normally get from literature--like a voice
saying the opposite of what the text seems to be saying on the surface.  

Ambiguity also means that more than one message is positively sent.  So a
reading of A. in Catcher that sees homosexuality is valid, AND a reading of
A. that does not see homosexuality is also valid.  Two seemingly
contradicting messages need to be sent for a text to be ambiguous, not no
message at all.

<<I'm not an English major (thank god) but as my favorite English teacher
once told me, if you see something in a text, it's there. Even if the
author didn't mean to imply that, your interpretation is valid because
that's how the work spoke to you...and that's what's great about
literature. I approach each novel I read with those words in mind.

Peggy>>

eh, what seemed to me to be happening in your post was not that you were
taking out of the text things that were there, but importing life experiences
into the text.  A husband and wife kissing in public profusely yet staying in
separate rooms in their home is in the text.  The "meaning" of this pointing
to homosexuality is not in the text--that comes from life experiences, and
that can be valid or not valid as far as the text goes.

That's why I said we had to look across several works to get the possible
meaning "in this particular instance."  I didn't mean that to apply across
the boards.  Since I think the message communicated in our text here is
ambiguous, we may need to look beyond this one text.

What your English teacher was describing was Reader Response theory, and not
all hold to it.  And even among RR critics, relatively few would say all
readings of a text are equally valid.  Not all readings of a text are equally
valid, and just because we "see" something there that doesn't mean it's
there.  What we most often see is ourselves--that's why we read--but that may
not necessarily be a commentary on the novel or story we are reading, but on
ourselves...

Jim