Re: Mr. Antolini

AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Fri, 05 Dec 1997 16:34:29 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 97-12-05 12:26:26 EST, you write:

<< Peggy, I don't think Jim knows very much about reader response criticism
 (validity of readings is really not the point of this school of
 criticism--see _Is There A Text in This Class_ by Stanley Fish or _The
 Implied Reader_ by Wolfgang Iser for thinking about subjectivity and how
 readers construct meaning) and I'm disappointed with the idea that our
 life experiences don't construct our readings and mean something to our
 "school of bananafish."  I'm a tenured English Professor who truly enjoys
 the way Malcs, for example, uses a pretty keen reading eye and living eye
 to make his points, I enjoy Helena's cantankerous, I enjoy Tim's kindness,
 and I miss Sundeep's wisdom...what they bring of themselves to our list
 and readings is much more important than New Critical bull of whose
 reading is most valid.>>

As far as theoretical perspective goes, your last comment sure tells us where
you stand, now, doesn't it?  

New Critical Bull?   :)

I respect that you are a tenured professor, and I'm sure you respect those
tenured professors out there that see some validity to New Critical Bull, if
for no other reason than professional courtesy.  For that matter, New
Historical Bull has some objective standards for validity of readings as well,
no?  For that matter, even postmodernists such as Umberto Eco quiver at the
thought of readers using texts as inkblots--read Six Walks in the Fictional
Woods.  He does distinguish between the model reader and the empirical reader,
a distinction not valid from a purely Reader Response perspective.  

What's really interesting is that Eco says his ideas are very similar to
Iser's, BUT.... :)  The ficitious reader implied by the text is but One
component of meaning in Iser's work, but is The Big Banana to Eco.  The text,
not the reader, is central to Eco so some objective standards of validity in
readings are possible...

I don't think that Reader Response Criticism has ANYTHING to do with validity
of readings either.  My point in my response to Peggy was that Reader Response
is not the Only approach to literature, and Reader Response is what she was
doing.

As far as the legitimacy of life experiences regarding reading, well...that
depends on your theoretical perspective, doesn't it?  :)  Again, to cite Eco
(I do an Umberto Eco online reading group for AOL so I've been reading him
more than usual lately), he relays an experience in which a friend of his
complained that Eco used his uncle as the basis of one of his characters in
Foucault's Pendulum.  Fact is, Eco never thought of the guy--the personality
of the character was constructed to fill a role in the novel.  This could be
an example of life experiences going wrong...

Seriously, we all do import life experiences into our readings.  When and how
much is appropriate is where the different schools of literary theory
disagree.  

And I think these disagreements are healthy :)   Argument is the life of
scholarship.  

Nanny nanny boo boo.  :P
 
 <<I believe the only true thing we can conclude
 about Antolini is that he is ambiguous, but that it is important for
 individual readers to weave their interpretations of him into their
 readings of catcher.  BTW, I really don't think Jim's post is offensive
 and the fact that someone left the list (who was not a very good
 contributor IMHO) for sensitivity issues is a private affair that has more
 to do with how individuals construct their e lives than anything said
 online here.
 
 will
  >>

Thanks very much for saying my post wasn't offensive.  I did worry about that.
I don't think that disagreeing is wrong, but HOW you disagree can be wrong.  I
can't judge that for myself...

Jim