Re: no problem
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 23 Nov 1998 15:40:57 +1100
> And yes, Kari, I have written quite a lot. Even a couple of books.
> And I simply never had the feeling that any of my readers had
> discovered a meaning hitherto unknown to myself. The ignorant
> slobs often seemed to miss the point.
Scottie, Scottie, Scottie ... THIS is exactly what I am talking about.
Don't you think there is something quite exciting and even transcendental
about the way your work takes on another life when it reaches the outside
world? When people find things in it that you didn't even *know* you put in
it, or alternatively, new meanings that they have constructed with your raw
materials. To me, people who come up with other ideas than the ones I
deliberately put in my writings are not `missing the point' but helping me
to discover aspects of my own work and my own mind that have hitherto
remained in shadow. To me, it's sort of like seeing what the Mona Lisa's
looking at; what's making her give us that bizarre smile. This is what I
understand Salinger's `literary cubism' to mean - the attempt to literally
convey multiple vantage points; to let the viewer construct one vantage
point with all the lines and planes and vague delineations.
> But I felt that was more
> my failing than theirs. Human beings are in the main unbelievably
> stupid & it takes a great writer working at the top of his form to
> get anything at all into their thick heads.
>
> (Australians excepted, of course.)
Maybe it's the different centre of gravity (:
Rest assured I can totally understand your vantage point. But I just find
it a little sad that the thing that excites me most about my writing is
something you wish to wholly deny in your own work.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest