Re: the road to hell

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sat, 21 Nov 1998 14:27:33 -0500 (EST) 

On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 18:10:34 +0000 Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie>
writes:
>    ‘...Each individual reader has been taught to read by Someone,
>    and has read specific books (that were also read by many other 
>people
>    in his or her society), and has led a particular life **in a 
>particular
>    society.** So reading, even an individual reading a novel in the 
>warmth
>    of his or her own bed, is a community event...’
>
>    It may be for you, Jim, but not for me.
>
>    When it comes to reading the only communities to which I belong 
>are
>    those created for me by the peculiar power of the writers whom I 
>enjoy.
>
>    Over the years - through the books & films & music of the time &
>    through acquaintance with people who had lived there then - I 
>eventually
>    came to know quite a lot about the Paris of the 20s.  But the 
>Paris of
>    The Sun also Rises was painted (in its ENTIRETY) for me by
>    Ernest Hemingway - in the days when I knew nothing of all that
>    other stuff (& which is virtually irrelevant to my enjoyment of 
>The
>Sun.)
>
>    Similarly, the whaling communities of New England, the Dublin of 
>1910
>    & the New York of the 1950s.....
>
>    I suspect this enchanted effect was the one Ernest, Herman, Jim & 
>Jerome
>    intended to create in my - empty but eager - mind.
>
>    To try to shut one’s eyes to the intentions of the writer seems to 
>me
>    an act of rather tired contrariness.
>

I still don't think you get my point here--I've been affected in a
similar way by literature. I probably read for a lot of the same reasons
you do, and expect to get the same things out of my reading.

I was talking (in part) about how it was Possible for writers so
different as Hemingway, Joyce and Salinger to create that effect.  Yes,
they "intended" to create that effect.  I think that's safe to say.  They
knew how to use words.  So they used them effectively, following the
(largely unspoken) rules of the reading community of which you, they, and
myself are a part.  

It's obvious to me that you don't have to have been to Dublin to be
affected by Joyce's description of it.  I think Joyce could only describe
what's unknown to us so effectively if he didn't know how to use (and
bend, stretch, and butcher :) ) the rules of language we all follow.

All you're talking about, really, is how this literature affected You. 
Do you see that?  How can you say you know anything about what the author
intended unless you identify yourself, to a degree, with the author?   

>    On another issue.  I didn’t write that an interest in religion was 
>the
>mark
>    of a third rate mind.  (Though I sometimes wonder.)  What I spoke 
>of
>were
>    ‘affectations of religiosity.’  Attention to the text is the first 
>rule,
>Jim.
>
>    Scottie B.

The phrase wasn't so clear that I could only take it one way.  What do
you mean by "affectations of religion?"  The names I mentioned went far
beyond "interest in religion."  In some cases they were the "creators" of
religion, "reformers" of religion, "definers" of religion.  Marx was
"interested" in religion, and so was Freud, but I didn't mention them
because their type of interest didn't serve my point.  

So, what did you mean by "affectations" of religion?

Jim

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