misc responses

Kim -- that was interesting, thanks for posting.

Britt -- have you ever heard Kenny Wayne Shepherd? He'll blow your doors off.
Reminds me of Clapton back when he was playing with energy. Clapton crossed with
Lynyrd Skynrd.

Daniel --

First off, thanks for the cool links. Useful. And for the NASA information. I
guess aliens invented velcro and Tang after all?

Next, you said:

<<Actually, I looked up 'literary critic' in my Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy and it said;" A literary critic who's writings are composed mainly of
quotes of other author's writings."
> >
> >"In literary criticism the critic has no choice but
> to make over the victim
> >of his attention into something the size and shape
> of himself."
>
> >J.P. Baumgardner>>

I've been thinking about this, and what's being expressed here is pretty common.
I think I mentioned Nabokov's _Pale Fire_ earlier, in which the author is
literally and physically sacrificed to save the critic, and this is nothing
compared to what the critic does to the author's poem.

But ultimately his "misreading" is the result of the critic using the author's
poem to tell his own story.

I think that's what happening whenever anyone reads, though. There's no one in a
reader's head tellling them, "Thou Shalt Not Read Your Own Life Into This Book."
Fact is, I think we read in order to do just that. C.S. Lewis said, "we read so
that we know we're not alone." We may not be reading the book the way the author
read it, but we're giving it our reading, and because of that the books are
meaningful and important to us.

So when people "accuse" critics of remaking the books they read in their own
image, they're missing the point. Critics only appear to be doing this because
they're doing out loud, and in public, what readers do all the time, quietly and
in their heads. And it's quite possible that readers just don't want to admit
that what they do is personal and quirky. They want to think it's Ultimate
Truth.

Well, maybe it is. Maybe it's just Personal Truth too, though. We'll never
know, though, unless we get it out in the open.

Jim

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Received on Tue Dec 10 23:13:55 2002