the adventures of a man who took everything literally

darren@daknet.com
Sun, 05 Jul 1998 11:42:43

>Stipe told her `Actually, that's
>*much* better. I'll use that from now on' ! :) This is as literal an
>example of the circle of communication I've been talking about as you can
>get!

 - and - 

>To what aspect? Do you believe that life shouldn't be taken literally?
>
>Camille 


This latter post instantly reminded of Chris Elliot, and just cracked me up!  

Anyway, since a good number of people often don't speak literally or even
act literally, can you really afford to take life completely literally?  I
mean, if you COULD take life literally, there'd be a lot of psychoanalysts
out of work.  (I'm sure they could get jobs as literary critics pretty
quickly, though, since psychology generally makes for some fun lit crit.)  

There's a story about James Joyce dictating a section of _Finnegans Wake_
to a friend.  During the course of the dictation, someone walked into the
room, there was an exchange, and the dictation resumed.  When the friend
read back the dictation, the exchange was there - Joyce thought about it,
then said, "Let it stand."  It's kind of neat that Joyce was that open to
the randomness of experience and all that with his work, but really I don't
think you can make all that much of something like that.  The same thing
with the Stipe story - he may have changed a line in one of his songs
because somebody's else misheard lyric sounded better, but I don't think
you can then argue that's how he writes his songs, or even that that
"circle of communication" is all that important when he's writing.  I
think, like Joyce, the result was their work sounded better to them.  I
think you can find a lot more examples of the reader/audience as burden to
the writer, really.  

Also, I find it amazing that so many people have argued against the notion
of a writer being the ultimate authority on his/her work.  I think it's the
case that writers often have no idea why they write one thing or another,
or else their artistic choices are no more complicated than it "sounded
good" at the time.  This kind of "truth" about a work just isn't
interesting enough for a lot of people, though.  In any case, the "truth"
of a given work always lies with its creator, but for the reasons already
laid out in previous posts, once the work goes out into the open, the
"truth" doesn't matter.  Interpretation does.  As it should be.  The work
goes out and has a life of its own.  I think a writer can be reminded of
things that went into the work from its readers, but that's an ex post
facto thing - it doesn't happen DURING the process.  (I think it's also
possible for the "Oh YEAH, that's what I meant" scamarooni to happen, too.
*grin*)  A writer is key to that whole phenomenom, in any case.  The notion
that the writer isn't the authority on his/her work is a bit nutty to me,
provided the writer isn't a bit off in the first place.  *grin*

Darren