Courtesy of The Sister:
I have to work very hard to convince students that this has nothing to do with literary criticism. This is just a parody of my profession they learn in high school.
I always warn my students from the outset that if anybody tries to tell me what the author meant, that person will become my sworn enemy.
You can’t ever be certain what the author meant, and, as you have correctly pointed out, sometimes their own interpretations of their work can be inferior in relation to the actual work. However, cultural studies does take an acute interest in how the writer is embedded in historical time and place, rather than giving sway to completely freewheeling interpretations. I really don’t like Barthes idea that the author is dead. That makes me sad — although prying too much into the author’s life also makes me sad.
That absurd prying into the artist’s personal life is what Dambudzo meant (haha!) when he said:
And few the luminous seasons in her eyes
Which to sheer adoration toss grudgingly
Bits of psychological speculation,
Bits of political condemnation.
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My [sarcasm] favorite “literary” questions were always “what would Author A say to Author B if they met?” This is why I failed reading comprehension as a kid.
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No, you are kidding, right? This wasn’t an actual exercise anybody gave you??
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given the ridiculousness of the question, you’d think I was kidding. But no, it appeared at least once, usually twice, in some iteration, on every major state standardized test I had to take growing up. Can you understand how I didn’t do so well on those exams? The questions were usually framed as “would author A agree with Author B on some topic that is marginally related to neither of the topics that either author has written about”, though sometimes there were multiple choice questions that were basically “which of the following would author A say to author B if they met in the street?” HOW WOULD I FUCKING KNOW? I’m not Author A, nor am I a mind-reader.
Yes, alas, you’d wish I was kidding. That “curtains are blue = depression” thing reminds me of 9th grade English, when we read A Separate Peace, and quite literally every single page of the book had a vocab word on it that the teacher highlighted to show a theme or a motif or a “deeper meaning” in the text. While I did appreciate some of the word choices, it really didn’t help me out at all, except to convince me that I obviously must not know how to read and get meaning out of books, which is just complete bs. Anyway, rant about reading and “literature” classes? I do wish I could’ve had you as a literature professor. Too bad my 2nd language is French. Every time I try to add another Latin-based language, bad things happened. You should’ve heard me try to communicate in Italian this summer. Most of the time it came out half Italian, half French, and then when they got confused, instead of clarifying, my brain would spit out bits of Spanish. Doesn’t go well.
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A standardized test on literature is one of the most ridiculous inventions I have ever heard of.
“though sometimes there were multiple choice questions that were basically “which of the following would author A say to author B if they met in the street?””
– I want to believe that you are making this up to make fun of me. But I have an overpowering suspicion that you are not and that it’s all true.
“HOW WOULD I FUCKING KNOW? I’m not Author A, nor am I a mind-reader.”
– If it’s any comfort, I would have failed that test. 🙂
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don’t I wish I was making this up? I hated failing tests…
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There was a great scene in the movie “Back to School” where Rodney Dangerfield (playing an multimillionaire who’s going back to school) who hires Kurt Vonnegut to ghost-write a paper analyzing “Slaughterhouse 5” (which Vonnegut wrote). And in the movie, Rodney throws the paper at Kurt, saying “You got an F! The teacher says you have no idea what your book was about!”. Hilarious.
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Author: “No, actually I meant to indicate the character’s depression by using the metaphor of blue curtains.” Well, that’s what the author thought he meant.
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Out of topic:
“The first time a Republican became president, he undermined habeas corpus, racked up loads of debt, and started a war that killed half a million Americans. The last time a Republican became president, he undermined habeas corpus, racked up loads of debt, and started a war that killed half a million foreigners. But if we keep working within the Republican Party, maybe we can turn it into an engine for peace and liberty, just like it used to be back at no time whatsoever.”
————Anthony Gregory
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Maybe Charles Rowley and his Remnants should be inspired by this “anarcho”-capitalist…
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Does this quote condemn Abraham Lincoln and compare him to Bush??? Jeez, what would people not do to find some ridiculous analogy where it doesn’t even exist.
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Not completely, but there’s some resemblance with him on the military side.
Of course, Lincoln the slave abolitionnist is way better than Bush.
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Ah yes…believe it or not, questions like this are actually why I opted not to take any literature courses in university.
You see, when I was in high school, we would be told to “explicate” the meaning of a text…and of course, I would always be able to effortlessly bullshit my way through such questions, twisting the text to “mean” whatever pet theory I had at the time and then mining quotes in order to support my interpretation. Needless to say, my high school English teachers always graded me so well for doing this that I quickly lost both faith and interest. My logic was that if my teachers (whom I presumed to be experts) were unable to tell the difference between bullshit and legitimate literary criticism, there probably was none.
I am pleased, however, to hear that this apparently not the way that it works in the real world.
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I’m beginning to understand why many of my students take so long to begin to approach my courses seriously. 😦
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I loved English in HS (read a good book then take two weeks off while the rest of the class finishes the book) but I completely lost my patience with the incessant need of the course curriculum to reduce every work to nihilism. During the final exam of HS I decided to argue that King Lear was not a nihilist play but somehow had a redeeming optimistic quality. Needless to say it did not go over well.
Why do HS curriculum writers feel that during HS, whilst teenagers are going through the most depressive suicidal phase of life, is it necessary to force the idea down their throats that the world is meaningless and life a waste of time.
Being a glutton for punishment I took all the english extensions available and then could not write fiction for five years. Thanks HS english for traumatising me so badly I almost became a lawyer.
/end rant.
P.S. Found you through Captain Capitalism though I already knew Socialism (or whatever name it goes under) was bad, despite my brief (if somewhat forced) flirtation with Marx in university.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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