Re: 'discarded like calendars'

Yeah, criticism back then sometimes tended to estimate the worth or
genius of a work. Some of it was silly. Some of it was valuable.

I wonder if he's distinguishing between book reviewers and professional
critics? They aren't always the same.

I tend to think that most works present a range of possible meanings
rather than a single one. Authors who insist on their own reading being
the right one tend to get pretty annoyed with critics, but they're not
good enough readers to understand how these alternate readings are possible.

Jim

Kim Johnson wrote:

>--- James Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> It's
>>quite possible that the author's contemporaries will
>>read the author's
>>work something like the author does, but there's no
>>guarantee. Critics
>>reflect (at least partially) the range of
>>understandings a culture
>>applies to a work. Later or different cultures
>>apply different
>>understandings, thus they think previous
>>understandings were wrong, and
>>are in turn thought wrong by their future readers.
>>Authors have their
>>own readings of their own work, which later readers
>>will, of course,
>>think wrong since it's not theirs.
>>
>>
>
>jarrell also writes in the essay i'm reading ('poets,
>critics and readers' [1959]); and i believe from an
>earlier context he is referring to the contemporary
>criticism of a contemporary writer:
>
>"Critics disagree about almost every quality of a
>writer's work; and when some agree about a quality,
>they disagree about whether it is to be praised or
>blamed, nurtured or rooted out. After enough
>criticism the writer is covered with lipstick and
>bruises, and the two are surprisingly evenly
>distributed. There is *nothing* so plain about a
>writer's books, to some critics, that its opposite
>isn't plain to others."
>
>i find it hard to imagine a culture's consensus on a
>work of art. the spectrum of understanding you refer
>to makes more sense.
>
>no doubt the artist must enjoy the fact (hope?) that
>his work will be even considered (even if interpreted
>'wrongly' to his own ideas re his work) 50 years
>hence. only fools or dead-sure geniuses would multiply
>that figure by ten.
>
>kim
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Dec 18 15:12:44 2002