Re: but in practice...

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 18:06:27 -0500 (EST)

You're still not representing those you disagree with accurately, so I'm
gonna continue trying :)

On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 19:13:27 +0000 Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie>
writes:
>    '...No thoughtful writer, however, would want to the reader
>    to experience only what was intended and nothing else...'
>
>    Really ?
>
>    The idea that a serious writer who has done his best to clarify
>    his thoughts & then sweated out the cleanest & most economical
>    way of expressing them should wish to have them muddied &
>    encrusted by the random associations of some well-meaning hick
>    - that strikes me as ludicrous.
>

I don't think anyone here has advocated that.  Even Camille said there
are less valid and more valid interpretations of literature.

>    Equally ludicrous seems to me the idea of writing as some kind
>    of co-operative effort between two sensitively thoughtful 
>participants.
>    Most of the really powerful writers I've known or read about had
>    the attitude: 'Take it or leave it....I'm giving you all a damned 
>sight
>    more than you deserve...'
>

I never said "writing" was a cooperative effort.  I said "meaning" was a
cooperative effort.  What is it that the writer sweats over?  A language
he or she was given, not a language he or she created.  And how is it
that an author comes to the conclusion that their writing is the most
economical possible?  Possibly by having read many, many other writers in
the past...

So where is your lone writer standing alone on the shores of meaning now?
 He's using a language he's been given, that he's mastered, in part, by
reading other masters, and he himself has been taught by someone else how
to read.

Jim


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