Re: Salinger's Problem with Westerners?

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 11:01:43 EDT

Ach. I feel we can actually have a good, mutually non-dismissive discussion
here :). Responses below.

Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE wrote:

> Jim: I have a question -- does your failure to see the usefulness of
> criticism say
> something about you, or about criticism?
>
> Daniel: Both, usefulness to the readers at large not the select specialists.
> It says that it fails me the general reader. I couldn't imagine myself
> spending semesters studying critical techniques and this says much about me
> and criticism. I am sure that many don't enjoy it either but I enjoy things
> that most would find odd; I frequently do mental calculations for the
> optimum sailboat design in my head and I enjoy that as much as I enjoy
> boating. Usefulness does not have to be enjoyable but if it isn't enjoyable
> it better have a good payback.
>

Can you really speak with any certainty about "usefulness to readers at large?"
I think this is an assumption that the study of critical theory attacks
successfully -- that there's such a thing as "readers at large" who share common
readings, ideas, questions, etc.

But you don't really need to study critical theory to understand that. Just sit
in a literature class where students are given a poem and asked to describe what
it means. If you have 30 students, you'll probably get at least 25 different
readings depending on the poem.

But notice I said "poem" and not "instruction manual" or even "essay." This is,
I believe, an important distinction. I hope to say more later.

> Jim: I'd say well over 95% of the criticism out there doesn't have any
> direct use to me at all, but at the same time, I wouldn't say it's not
> useful. I would say it's useful to people asking different questions about
> different texts.
>
> Daniel: What questions? Even subjectively some questions are more useful
> than others and some not at all.
>

You still haven't really addressed my response -- you need to define "useful" in
order to do so. If "even subjectively" some questions are more useful than
others and some not at all (I agree), than you can't really make an objective
claim at all about the usefulness of criticism, can you?

> Jim: I think the mistake you're making here is partly one of objectifying
> something that's inherently subjective. A discovery in a scientific
> discipline -- say, computer science -- could conceivably affect anyone
> working with computers, both directly and indirectly. But the article in
> the last PMLA about the influence of contemporary medicinal practices upon
> Keats' poetry (if I'm remembering the
> article right) wouldn't necessarily have any use to anyone but a Keats
> scholar, and then only a Keats scholar interested in asking those kinds of
> questions about Keats' poems.
>
> Daniel: Exactly, the questions asked by an expert will measurably differ
> from those asked by the general reader. Useful to you but not to me. Does
> it have a high power to weight ratio? vs. What color is it?
>

I disagree. I think the "general reader" (that I don't think exists as a
unified creature) doesn't really ask questions that much different from many
critics -- in other words, every question brought up by your imagined "general
reader" is also brought up in criticism, while I agree not every question
addressed in criticism is considered by the general reader. I think the real
difference is in, at least partly, the amount of detail. General readers may
reasonably ask questions about "historical influences" or "cultural influences"
in general. At least some critics will point out very specific and discreet
historical or cultural influences backed, hopefully, with good research.

> Jim: Also, just by asking about "the writer's intent" as a valid ground for
> textual meaning, you're working within a specific set of critical
> assumptions that just aren't held anymore. If you look for criticism trying
> to answer this question, you have to look for some pretty old criticism,
> generally.
>
> Daniel: Exactly, I want transportation so I buy a vehicle you want a "car"
> so you buy a model. I have not really discovered criticism to help with the
> questions (I believe answerable to a degree) that I and many other readers
> ask.
>

I've already addressed this, but below (re: the use of biographies, and you did
respond). But I would further ask: why is criticism ever obligated to address
the questions that your imaginary "general reader" asks, especially in the form
that the general reader asks it?

Cliff's Notes?

Jim: If you really think through these assumptions, they're really nonsense--
you

> can't read the author's mind directly, ever, can you? You can only know
> what
> the author may have meant by the words the author speaks. So everything,
> ultimately, comes down to interpreting those words within a specific
> historical
> and cultural context. As a result, what you're really asking for, in the
> end, is
> historical research.
>
> Daniel: Not necessarily. I think that there is an intent in the writers
> mind when he writes and though we may never be able to know in an ultimate
> full sense we can know it by degree and see the world through someone else's
> eyes.

You're not paying attention to what I said. I never at any time said that the
"author does not have an intent in his/her writing." I said, instead, that the
author's intent, whatever it may have been, is only accessible through the
author's writing, so the real issue isn't trying to read the author's mind (an
impossible task), but to understand the author's writing within a specific
context (usually historical and cultural). If you read older critics like
Emmanuel Hirsch (who argued for authorial intent as the ground of meaning in
literature), you'll see that they employ pretty intensive historical and
biographical research (as well as linguistic) to support their beliefs about the
author's probable intent.

My argument is that you don't need to relate to the author at all to do this --
all that you are really doing is saying, "this is how one member of the author's
time and culture may have read the author's text when the author wrote it."
This ultimately has nothing to do with voodoo mind reading, but everything to do
with language's dependence upon a specific historical context for a specific
meaning.

> I don't know the urbanized eastern US, some of you do, you may be
> able to explain something that goes over my head (historical/cultural), but
> some thing's may be as simple as an idea in one part of the book informing
> something in another part of the same book, relationships I missed.

These intertextual relationships are addressed by critics all the time.

> Do we
> know absolutely? No. Does that mean there is no specific meaning intended by
> the author? No.

Did I ever say there was no specific meaning intended by the author?

No.

> Does that mean we could get in the ball field with a
> careful reading? yes.

Is there any way you could ever know that your ideas are anywhere near the
author's ideas about his/her own text?

No.

Especially in the case of authors like Shakespeare, who didn't leave a single
word of writing about his own writing.

> And a dialogue between careful readers can check
> biases and errors to approach that intended meaning.

What do you mean by careful readers? Would you mean professionals with a good
deal of historical and linguistic research under their belts?

Something like, oh, a professional critic? :)

You're not arguing against literary criticism in general, you simply have a
preference for one specific type of literary criticism. It's still being done.
Check out historians.

> My experience with
> criticism is that it is not concerned with the idea or principle
> communicated or pours a whole bunch of unrelated ideas into the story.
> That's fine but it doesn't usually help the general reader.
>

Again, you invoke an imaginary "general reader." But you need to work hard to
specifically define an idea that's "unrelated" to a story. Can you go into more
detail?

> Jim: Foucault, one of those nasty postmodern critics, actually does a lot of
> this.
> As do people influenced by him. Marxists do this too. Freudian critics can
> probe pretty deeply into the author's life if they're really doing their
> work
> right.
>
> Daniel: I don't think Freudians can do their work right because their tools
> are flawed (extremely) to begin with.
>

I agree :).

> Jim: Suppose the author, at one time in his/her life, writes a great deal
> about what
> his/her work means to him/her. Is that a guarantee that the author was
> thinking
> that while writing the works we're so interested in? Is it a guarantee he
> may
> not change his/her mind later and then say, THIS is what my work means?
> Authorial intent is a complete dead end for textual meaning.
>
> Daniel: Yes intent of the author can change but it is the both intents that
> I an interested in, that at the time of writing and that at reflection or
> revision. It may not be a guarantee but you can have a degree of sureness
> otherwise this whole list is pointless or a flower.

Suppose the author wrote nothing at all about his or her work? Which authorial
intent is most important -- the one the author had while writing, or the one the
author has years later? Suppose the author changes his/her mind and says,
years, later, this is what I meant all along (in other words, suppose you have
an author that is being dishonest either with themselves or with the public)?
What do you do then?

Isn't the author a rather slippery ground for textual meaning, then?

> A manual has great
> confidence in meaning agreeing with intent, nonfiction, not bad and fiction
> can vary. Is it a Dead end, it can be but mostly it can be useful. Can we
> disagree on intent/meaning of a work? yes. But can one be closer than the
> other? yes. If the author is not a recluse and alive you can sometimes talk
> to them of their intent (I have Done this). We are doing it now with one
> another.

I think it's important to note that our discussion now has a specific historical
and cultural context that we are both participating in, and that we're both
aware of, even if we can't completely describe its characteristics. In other
words, we have context.

But 500 years from now (or even 6 months from now), will this discussion be that
clear? Wouldn't uncovering that context be necessary to get somewhere close to
the meanings we both seem to see so clearly now?

> Jim: There's plenty of historical research out there. You may want to start
> with a good biography or two or three if you want research about fiction
> that goes in the direction you're interested in. And even then, I think
> you'll find, there's no real guarantee you'll get anywhere near a consensus
> on the author's probable intent.
>
> Daniel: What I mean by intent is the idea/information the author is trying
> to communicate. Some authors aren't sure themselves and some are
> communicating emotions but for the vast majority of literature I think there
> is agreement at least on the mere or core intent.

What happens when you want to ask questions that go beyond the "mere or core
intent"? What happens when you want to say something more than, "_The Catcher
in the Rye_ is about a troubled teenager"? I think you'll find that this "mere
or core intent" is very unsatisfying for people who want to think deeply about
their reading, and that once you go beyond this, you get into trouble.

> Salinger I believe is a
> good enigmatic author where you probably won't get agreement on many things
> but I think you would be amazed at how much the whole list could agree on.
> But agreement is not necessarily the measuring stick either. Thanks for the
> recommendation, I did read some Salinger biographies and they helped
> somewhat.
>
> Daniel

It's interesting that you speak of a "community or group of readers" now instead
of just the author, and speak of them as the arbiters of textual meaning. Is
the community of readers the final determiner of meaning, or the author, then?
What happens if the author's ideas differ from the majority of the group ideas?
Is the author wrong or the group wrong? I think this is one reasonable
approach, and Reader Response critics (as well as some older critics as well)
quite often appeal to this.

But again, you have professional critics who have theorized in detail exactly
your assumptions. And other critics who disagree with these assumptions and
describe their problems.

Jim

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Received on Thu Oct 24 11:11:16 2002

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