Re: Thinking with Jim and Robbie

Scottie,

You worry that if we lose the notion of verifiable intention in a literary
text, it "would seem, in turn, to do away with many other ideas
responsibility, good will, ill will, etc, etc, ETC."

Why?

Reading, like life, carries with it demands for all of these things, and an
ethics of reading does not need a verifiable origin in order to function.
Indeed, for many of us, this is precisely "how we live our lives." We make
decisions, we interpret, we re-read and re-interpret. We defend our
decisions and debate their multiple effects, all the while not having any
ultimate "source" against which to check our interpretations or any set of
verifiable "correct" resolutions against which to measure the wisdom of our
decisions.

Life, like a literary text, which can remain at times not as an unmediated
nor recoverable expression of a finally identifiable "intention" from a
single mind at a single moment, does not come with an answer sheet. And so
it is more necessary than ever that we read (and live) with care and with
responsibility and with good will and that we do the best we can.

But please remember, it is literary texts we are talking about, after all,
not someone writing you a death threat or asking you to close the window. We
are talking about interpreting what happens when I encounter, each time, the
words in "Before the Law" or "Prufrock." I would simply like to know how one
verifies any assertions concerning what Robbie would call specifically
"intention," traceable to the moment of composition, during those events.

--John

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Received on Sun Oct 27 06:10:23 2002