Re: Thinking with Jim and Robbie

Hi Scottie,

I'm going to be much too brief, because this is too much like my job and when
I'm not doing it there, I don't want to be doing it here.

You ask:

"Would you not agree that writers of fiction (especially) hate to hear
authorial intent pooh-poohed? "

Well, I've read many, many interviews with the likes of Vonnegut and Barth
and Sollers and even Garcia Marquez and Borges, all of whom are extremely
skeptical of and even cynical about the notion (at least in their public
statements) of an unmediated text and a determinable intent. Vonnegut lies
regularly about "what his books mean" and admits to lying, for this very
reason.

But that's not really the issue.

Even if "writers of fiction" believe that their goal is, as you say, "a
successful transfer of thought or emotion," the "success" of that transfer is
simply not verifiable on the part of the reader when he is reading a text
like "Before the Law." Quite simply, how would he know whether the event
that takes place when he encounters that little parable corresponds to the
ideas that were in Kafka's head at the moment he composed it? And is this
even the relevant question, since, for me at least, what happens each time I
read and teach that enigmatic single page is far more important than whether
or not there is some sort of neat mathematical equivalency between what my
students and I are saying and what Franz was thinking that day? If that
sounds arrogant and inappropriately disrespectful of Franz's so-called
"intent," then so be it. Once he has signed the text and it has been
disseminated among readers, my interest is directed at the event of reading
and its many useful and joyous and relevant and responsible opportunities.
The primary responsibility I feel is to the words on the page and to the acts
of reading, if I'm honest about it, and not to the spectral figure of the
author or even to the memory of the man. But even that is too simple, since
the memory and the signature still haunt every reading in important and
powerful ways.

Then again, _Glas_ is one of my very favorite books and it complicates this
problem for me in many even more difficult and relevant variations. That, of
course, is a whole other discussion.

And this is too much like work.

Now if anyone wants to talk about how to put a draw spin on a long iron when
hitting off of pine straw, I'll be there.

Thanks all and enjoy your week,

--John

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Received on Sun Oct 27 15:11:02 2002