The Ending in "A Gathering of Old Men"

Aesthetically, I think Ernest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men would better end with the penultimate chapter:

"But we had all gathered around Charlie. Mathu had knelt down 'side him and raised his head out of the dust. They had really got him. Right in the belly. He laid there like a big old bear looking up at us. He was trying to say something, but it never came out. He kept on looking at us, but after a while you could tell he wasn't seeing us no more. I leaned over and touched him, hoping that some of that stuff he had found back there in the swamps might rub off on me. After I touched him, the rest of the men did the same. Then the women, even Candy. Then Glo told her grandchildren they must touch him, too."

But while the final chapter seems to be but a tying up of loose ends, it actually works thematically. It is here we see reconciliation, a movement toward healing. The novel includes many anecdotes showing how the legal system was a major part of the racial oppression and injustice of the past; in the final chapter, we see the law treating the black men fairly (in this case justice means amnesty). Gil sits with his family in court, Salt and Pepper play together and win, Mathu is able to leave without Candy, and we end with a conciliatory image, with Candy holding Lou Dimes' hand (a similar image ends Paradise Lost, also a moment of hope at the end of a dark period).

At the end Lou Dimes, a peripheral character that primarily operates as a narrator, becomes important. Earlier in the novel, when Mapes uses violence, Dimes says "I didn't like what was going on either, but I knew that had I interfered, Mapes would have knocked hell out of me and thrown me in the back of his car." Lou Dimes disapproves, but he passively allows violence and racial injustice to occur (this and other forms of passivity are addressed throughout the novel). But in the end, Lou Dimes is not allowed to be passive:

"You're in charge. Raise your right hand. You do swear--"
"Like hell," Lou said.
"You're still in charge," Mapes said. "Now, don't bother me anymore tonight."
"What am I supposed to do?" Lou asked him.
"You figure that out," Mapes said. "Just leave me alone."

The old way is past. People like Lou Dimes, formerly neutral non-participants, must work toward a new way of doing things.

But Reader-response is necessary here. It is likely as a reader I find Lou Dimes significant because his social role is close to my own (the teacher in the bar is certainly closer). In my social role, I have rarely had active individual part on any side of racial injustice or the fight for progress toward equality. I've read, taught, talked, listened, discussed, thought, and as an individual strived to treat all people with equal dignity. But I have mostly been a non-participant, a passive citicizen, and I recognize my social role in coming to the novel. Other readers of different ages, races, and gender will find greater meaning in other characters. Certainly geographic location matters too: I suspect a southerner reads the book differently than a northerner (and more specifically, a Louisianian will read the text differently than a Minnesotan). We bring ourselves to the text, including our values (when reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, isn't a vegetarian going to respond differently than a meat-eater?), and we needn't deny that (and it is why in literary study I prefer plurality to objectivity). The text offers me a moral meaning that it won't offer to everybody--and rather than deny that, I prefer to recognize my subjective history and concerns that may direct my focus while reading.

New Criticism in the Classroom

Today in class I told students to forget authorship, to ignore the name at the top of the page.  And that's when I realized that in the classroom, I'm something of a New Critic.

I generally provide little to no biographical information about the author, focusing on the text itself.  I like a Reader-response approach, but what I want students responding to is the text alone (and their experience with it).   I don't want students to worry too much about the author's identity or biography (with some exceptions).  In some cases, if students ask questions about the author, I can provide them nothing because I know nothing (other than that they write in English, and perhaps a general idea of when they wrote).  I do provide some cultural and historical material, but only when it is directly relevant to the text itself.

The specific context today was Robert Frost's "Home Burial."  While teaching this poem, I often talk about ways of dealing with death: the different ways individuals handle grief, the rituals we construct surrounding death, etc.  A student raised the issue of gender roles in the poem, and I'm open to that exploration (though in this poem, I didn't want gender roles to define the different ways the husband and wife grieve).  But for some reason when it was pointed out that the poet was a man and could be slanting perspectives of the characters (which is true), I found this a tremendous distraction from the text itself.  The wife in the poem has lengthy stretches of straight dialogue where she is able to express what she thinks and feels.  If we get hung up on discussing how a male author constructed those words for her, then we aren't taking the words of the text on their own merits, and I don't think we're reading the poem well.

I don't think I can formally call what we do in my literature classes New Criticism: I'm far too willing to bring up extra-textural material if I think it offers insights into the text (or if I think the text offers insight into extra-textural material).  But in my decision to forgo authorial biography almost entirely, and my insistence that students respond to what they see in the text itself, I'm certainly incorporating the ideas of New Criticism into the classroom.

The Merchant of Venice

A Reader-response tour through Shakespeare's plays continues.

In acts four and five, I found myself more riveted to the text than I can ever recall being while reading Shakespeare.

If the world is a stage, what matter is the role we choose to play. 

Antonio: I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

Gratiano: Let me play the fool, (I.i. 80-83)

Though the world as stage is a common expression in Shakespeare, this particular passage uniquely hits me.  The emphasis is on the characters acting their roles--and if the world is a stage, we the players must consider our roles upon it.

I have a recurring dream in which I am an actor, but while on stage I struggle to remember my lines, my blocking, the scene I'm in, even the play I'm in.  I sometimes think this dream is where I play out my tension in life, where I may feel like I am acting a part, and I fear that soon an audience will discover that I really don't know what I'm doing.  And I'm also a recovering existentialist, so I do find this focus on the roles we choose to play interesting.   So there are reasons a passage like this draws me.

But it also makes me think about the importance of character in drama.  In fiction or poetry, there are many elements of the work that can be ascendant.  But in performed drama, character must be ascendant--it is the actors upon the stage which must command our attention.  If 20th century dramatists like Beckett, Pinter, or Stoppard worked toward abolishing the traditional conventions of drama, perhaps their greatest challenge was smashing consistent characters.

Shylock

Is any racism in the play offset by the playwright's giving to Shylock this, as poignant a passage as any in Shakespeare?

"I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?" (III.i)

I have trouble believing it was an anti-Semite that wrote these lines.  Furthermore, when Shylock is accused of cruelty, he counters the accusation by referencing the cruelty of the Christian world.  In Act 3, scene 1:

"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.  If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?  Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?  Why, revenge.  The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

And in Act 4, scene 1, lines 90-100:

"Duke: How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend'ring none?

Shylock: What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchased slave,

Which, like your asses and your dogs and your mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them.  Shall I say to you,

'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs!

Why sweat they under burdens?  Let their beds

Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates

Be seasoned with such viands'?  You will answer,

'The slaves are ours.'"

Appearances and Disguise

In Act 3, scene 2, Bassanio has a lengthy speech on distrusting appearances, and later in the play Portia and Nerissa disguise themselves as men.  I've noted before that the disconnect between appearance and reality is a common theme in literature and in my lit course.  It goes further: in the composition class I teach this semester, our first unit is on Fairy Tales with an emphasis on Cinderella.  A common theme we find in Fairy Tales is deceit, disguise, and the importance of distrusting appearances.  This is theme is runs deep--it is old and ubiquitous, appearing in stories from many ages and told for many audiences.

Antonio's Nonresistance

I often read books on religious pacifism (notably works by Yoder and Tolstoy) which emphasize the Christian command not to return evil with evil, to respond to threat of violence with internal and external peace.  Antonio's words as he prepares to face his own violent death strike me as an expression in the Christian pacifist vein:

                               "I do oppose

My patience to his fury, and am armed

To suffer with a quietness of spirit

The very tyranny and rage of his." (IV.i.11-14)

Mercy and Justice

I might also here reference one of the firmest lessons I took from the religion of my youth--because you are forgiven your sins, you must forgive others their sins against you.  Says a disguised Portia:

"Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation.  We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy." (IV.i.203-207)

Jesus tells a parable about a servant being forgiven a large debt, then demanding immediate payment from another servant for a small debt; when the master who forgave the large debt hears about that, he gets angry and punishes the servant.  This theme is shown in the treatment (or is it cheating?) of Shylock--he cruelly withheld mercy, and is thus treated with no mercy.   Yet I see a contradiction.  Isn't it a form of "justice" to withhold mercy from Shylock because he withheld mercy?  And didn't Portia just tout mercy over justice?  To follow the standard Portia asked of Shylock, they should now mercifully forgive Shylock, letting him go on his way without punishing him.  Though the Duke and Antonio grant him some leniency, they still do punish Shylock (pretty severely, I would think).  Shylock gets his "just" reward because he demanded justice instead of mercy--and the very people who asked him to show mercy are not now willing to show him terribly much mercy at all.

The theme of mercy gets a more light-hearted treatment in Act 5, when Portia and Nerissa forgive their husbands for giving away their rings.

Sprigs on a Barrel Organ

Dostoevsky's underground man insists on irrational motivations driving human behavior, and that furthermore, these irrational drives are directly tied to free will.  Here's what Shylock has to say:

"Some men there are love not a gaping pig,

Some that are mad if they behold a cat,

And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,

Cannot contain their urine; for affection,

Master of passion, sways it to the mood

Of what it likes or loathes.  Now for your answer:

As there is no firm reason to be rend'red

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,

Why he a harmless necessary cat,

Why he a woolen bagpipe, but of force

Must yield to such inevitable shame

As to offend, himself being offended,

So can I give no reason, nor I will not." (IV.i.48-60)

This passage perhaps makes us sprigs on a barrel organ: though we don't know the psychological reasons we loathe certain things, nonetheless we do, and are compelled beyond our will to respond in certain ways to those things we loathe.  It is not a free unreason--there are many schools of psychology that could try take us beyond "there is no firm reason."

Antony and Cleopatra

I'm reading all of Shakespeare's plays in a year: this is the third.

Reader-response
Reader-response theory recognizes that when encountering a work of literature, the individual brings with him or her all sorts of experiences with life and literature. An honest approach recognizes this, and may find insight in the text.

I'm a junky for watching good TV series on DVD. And after seeing Rome, my visualization for characters like Mark Antony and Cleopatra is still stuck on James Purefoy (not, oddly enough, Charlton Heston) and Lyndsey Marshal. Sometimes an actor's appearance and representation sticks in the mind, forming the character. I expect that for my entire life, James Purefoy's Mark Antony will be my Mark Antony. Purefoy's movements, facial expressions, voice, and speech rhythms will always linger in my memory.

My question is whether this connection of a literary character to a actor's portrayal is based on my own memory, or on the strength or weakness of the text. I encountered Hamlet before I had seen any actor portray him, and so when I read Hamlet, my mental visualization is independent of any actor. So too with memorable characters like Macbeth and Lear. But I expect that Kenneth Branaugh will always be Henry V for me. Is this solely because of the chronological order I encountered the work, or because of the strength of the work itself? After all, at this point I can occasionally read a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest without seeing Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy.

Or it could be in the quality of the play. For whatever reason, Shakespeare's literary Antony couldn't shake Purefoy's Antony from my memory.

Suicide
Perhaps only Dostoevsky made suicide more a prominent element of his work than Shakespeare. I can see why suicide is such a pressing theme for literature. It is the place where human will confronts nature, chance, or fate. It is the direct confrontation of free will and death. It is the ultimate show of despair at the cosmos or mere circumstance. In Dostoevsky, I think it is the rejection of the belief that human beings are machine-like animals, preprogrammed creatures without will concerned only with survival: in Dostoevsky, suicide shows that there are other motivations (like ideas) that guide human behavior.

Shakespeare's plays are littered with murders and suicides, and eloquent characters capable of insight into just what suicide may mean.

"creator and receiver both"

In The Prelude, William Wordsworth refers to a child as

"creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds."

This passage works as a summary for my conception of reading. When I read, I am receiving something that is created by the writer. But if I am fully engaged with the text, then I am also creating something. As a reader, I create (or, if you prefer, re-create) characters, scenes, settings, events, images, meaning, ideas. I am working in alliance with the work itself to create meaning.

Is there a distinction between creation and simply perception? Perhaps, as in a different context of The Prelude, Wordsworth does distinguish between the two (in a passage that seems aware of Kant):

"Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that we have made."

In perception, we merely bring out what is already there, while in creation, we make something, "working but in alliance" with what is already there to create ourselves. I do think reading is creation. The work itself doesn't exist outside the mind of the reader: only when the reader engages in the text (in any way: reading it, discussing it, writing about it, remembering it) does the text have any power at all.

Reading: context and memory

Near the end of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a dancing bear gets shot--it is but one more act of violence in a book full of senseless, meaningless violence. As I read the incident, I couldn't help but recall Hawthorne's "The May-Pole of Merry Mount," when Endicott orders a bear that was dancing with people to be shot.

Near the beginning of Shaw's Man and Superman, Ramsden tries to console Octavius over Whitefield's death by telling him "it's the common lot." Reading this, it is hard not to recall Gertrude's admonition to Hamlet that "Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die/ Passing through nature to eternity" (Hamlet dismisses her with "Ay, madam, it is common"; no matter how true it is, it is pretty shoddy consolation to tell a mourner that death is the common lot).

I don't know that either McCarthy or Shaw intended an allusion (though the parallel in the death of the dancing bear in Blood Meridian and "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" offers intriguing symbolic meaning). What's more, it doesn't matter if these parallels were intentional. As a reader, the connection has been made in my head. As I am reading, I can't ignore my memories of earlier works I've read: the parallels pop into my brain whether I seek them out or not. These parallels may mean much, or they may mean little and I might pass over them quickly.

But while reading one work, I have the memory of everything else I've ever read (or at least, everything that I remember of everything else I've ever read). As I'm fully engaged with a text, that text may remind me of other things I've read. It may provoke me to stop and consider the texts.

For reading, that means at least two things, I suppose. It means we rarely read in a vacuum: we bring ourselves and our memories of past reading to the reading experience. It also means that finishing a book does not truly mean finishing a book: that book could come back to you at a future moment, in unexpected context.

Reading McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"

The power of literature is largely in imagination. Reading allows me to escape myself, to experience the world for someone, somewhere, somewhen else. The stories we read are largely imagined by the authors, and re-imagined by the readers. Reading takes us away from our own narrow experiences and into another experience.

But when I read, I do not set myself aside. I am a vegetarian, and when I read descriptions of animals being hunted or eaten, I became conscious of myself. I am a pacifist, and when I read depictions of violence, I become hyper-aware: what is happening, why is it happening, how is it being represented, etc.

And that is the paradoxical power of literature. Even as it can take you away from your Self, it thrusts you deeper into your Self.

Creative Reading: Visualization and Imagination

When I read, I don't require authors to provide me with many visual details, for my mind is already going to do the work of visualization. When I read, I visualize scenes, characters, and events in vivid detail. I do it unconsciously but deeply.

When I think back on Dostoevsky's The Idiot, I can picture the balcony of Prince Myshkin's apartment. I can see Rogozhin's dark home. I see in clear detail the park in the suburb the characters walk through. And here's the beautiful thing about reading and imagination: though it is Dostoevsky who conjures this park, who was likely describing a real park, my visual representation of this park exists only in my mind. I cannot convey what I see: if I put it into words, you will begin to see your own park. We won't see the same thing.

I don't always remember characters' names, but oh, how I remember them. I can visualize the look on Rogozhin's face when he attempts to murder Prince Myshkin. I have in my head the way the characters each smile, frown, laugh, cry, walk, talk. I cannot describe to you the physical details of each character's face: what I visualize is the aura of each character's essence, that essence that exudes from his or her very Being, that pours out, that emanates. The essence of Prince Myshkin, of Rogozhin, of Nastasya Filippovna is what I actually visualize in my mind. Is this a particular gift of Dostoevsky, who claimed to penetrate the depths of the human soul, and who was able to express these depths with his own creative and aesthetic genius? Perhaps.

Reading is a creative activity. An author conjures a character, a scene, an event. But you, the reader, imagine it. And that is why, though we can talk about what we read, reading is such a deeply individual activity. My Prince Myshkin, my Rogozhin, my Nastasya Filippovna, though given to me by Dostoevsky, are now mine alone. I participated in their creation.

Watching, Reading, and the Aesthetic

I like plot. When I watch a TV show or a movie, I want something to be happening. There are two genres from which I don't demand plot; because horror and comedy attempt to elicit a specific audience reaction (fear or laughter), whether these genres use plot or not to elicit this reaction doesn't matter to me as much as whether or not they do in fact elicit the intended reaction. But generally, if I'm spending time watching something, I would like some sort of story.

But this post isn't about plot; when I'm watching, I don't just want plot. I have a very keen appreciation for the beautiful image. In visual art and entertainment, the aesthetic means a great deal to me. In film and television, what sticks in my memory are not necessarily the ideas, but the aesthetic of the work. I remember the sounds--the music and the way actors speak. I remember the way characters move or hold themselves (when I think of The Sopranos, I see Tony brooding about. I often associate other characters with their visual representations: Janice's distinct plodding walk, or the way Johnny Sac holds and smokes a cigarette, or Silvio's hunched shoulders. Ah, and the sounds! In The Sopranos all of the characters have such unique, distinct voices and speech patterns: when I think of Christopher, of Paulie, of Silvio, of Dr. Melfi, of Uncle Junior, what will stick out to me is the way they talk). In all I watch, I remember the movements of the camera, the way the frame captures the action, the color and movement and tone. Catching parts of Peter Jackson's King Kong on TNT this weekend, I'm struck not just by how much that movie captures beautiful images, but how much that movie is about capturing beautiful images.

Do I read differently than I watch? Perhaps, since I've said for a long time I read for ideas. One of my favorite films is Moulin Rouge, not for any great ideas, but precisely because of the brilliant aesthetic: the music, the movement, the colors, the constantly shifting camera, the distinct speech patterns, the dancing, the gorgeous sets, the costumes, the actors, the beauty of it all. It is the aesthetic of the Red Curtain Trilogy that has enthralled me, not any ideas.

But perhaps it is worth pointing out that while I read for ideas, I am most certainly also reading for aesthetic. When I reject Aestheticism for myself, it is a rejection of "art for art's sake" and a primary or total focus on the aesthetic at the expense of the content. But I most certainly appreciate and recognize the aesthetic originality and power in literature.

Now here's an odd shift: I'm not sure how I read different types of writing differently. I'm not sure my mind is operating differently whether I'm reading literature (poetry, drama, or fiction), history, theology, philosophy, criticism, essays, any remotely serious writing: I'm not entirely sure there's a difference in the way I read.

Ah, but indeed there seem to be different ways my mind is working that I'm not even consciously registering. Actually, I feel rather different when I'm reading a play: it is somehow seems distinct from any other type of writing, and I think I am examining it in a different way (for one thing, my mind is picturing it both on a stage and in a "real" setting that I might picture from reading a novel). I think too I read a poem differently than a novel; in fact, I'm sure I do. And so too must there be a difference in the way I read anything else. But what I'm saying is that I'm not sure what that difference is, and that the similarities in the way I approach any form of serious writing may be greater than the differences. Maybe.

And again I come to Reader-response. I recognize what I respond to in film/television (plot and the aesthetic of sight and sound). Perhaps I ought to become more conscious of precisely how I am reading what I read. I say I read for ideas, but I certainly consider the aesthetic: I don't ignore one for the other. But is the relationship between ideas and the aesthetic in my reading completely understood to me? Just what is it I love about Ted Hughes' Crow so much? If I really had to define it, I'd probably say it is some of my favorite poetry because of the aesthetic, not for any ideas that may be pulled out of these myth-like poems (or is it neither, but rather entertainment? The poems are quite amusing). I respond to Ted Hughes in a way that transcends content and probably resides somewhere in the aesthetic. And even when it is the content I respond to, how would I divorce it from the work's aesthetic? I adore Paradise Lost. I love the content and I love the ideas. But I also love the imagery Milton conjures. I love his poetry. I could spend a long time analyzing and discussing his art in the epic poem. It's a poem beautifully structured and containing many beautiful lines of poetry. It's a poem so rich in both art and content that I rather think it transcends any meaningful separation between the art and the ideas.

So I do in fact read different things differently. My brain pictures different things while I read drama. I respond to poetry in ways that I might not respond to other types of writing. Perhaps what I should say is that when I read history or philosophy or theology, I'm not reading those things that differently from the way I read literature. I've a rather big interest in both history and theology, yet I was an English major and now I'm an English teacher: I started with literature, and I've taken my modes of reading for literature to other types of writing, not vice versa. I might also recognize that in all of my reading, I'm reading for my personal education. At some level, I am reading to learn and to grow, no matter what I'm reading. Perhaps this is another reason that while I do appreciate the aesthetic of literature, I don't accept Aestheticism: I do approach literature for such things as education and edification, concepts that, if I understand it correctly, Aestheticism would reject as morality that doesn't belong in art.

This exploration (navel gazing, certainly, but I hope to a larger purpose) is an attempt to understand the manner in which I watch and read. Harold Bloom wrote a book called How to Read and Why; as a blogger about literature, perhaps my subtitle should be "How I read and why." But blogging about literature probably always contains that as a subtext: it's a rather personal, intimate medium in which to discuss experience with literature.

Little Downpour

On Reader-Response
Let me pull out my thesis from the post (and enjoyable discussion) below. My assertion is that as reading is such a distinctly individual activity, we should accept differing, subjective modes of reading. We do not all read for the same reasons or in the same way, and that's a good thing. Our reading experience should be for ourselves, so each person should read in the way that is most authentic to him/her. Furthermore, multiplicity of reading perspectives brings greater understanding of a given work: coming at a work from several different approaches, and then sharing what we've found, makes literary discussion more enriching than if we all used the same approach.

I read for ideas: I assert that not to claim that's the way people ought to read, but to recognize my own mode of reading. I do not assert that there is a "proper" or "true" way for every single person to read. When we read, we need not be limited by any approach; we can choose how to approach the work in an authentic way.

Plagiarism
I don't deal with cheating terribly often; I think I make my paper assignments distinct and specific enough that it's difficult for students to try find a paper that suits the assignment. The much more prevalent problem I face is unintentional plagiarism: students that don't intentionally pass of another's work as their own, but do a shoddy, inadequate, incomplete job of citing their sources.

What's frustrating about catching intentional plagiarism is the work it adds as a professor. In order to fully follow the university's policy on plagiarism, there is all sorts of extra work I need to do. The student tries to avoid doing the work of writing a paper, and for that I get to do extra work. It's like Dr. Farthing says: "What I don't understand is... when you owe a bookie a lot of money, and he, say, blows off one of your toes, you still owe him the money. Doesn't seem fair to me." Wait--it's not really like that. Except the last part. Actually, here's a better metaphor. Last night my son woke up and wouldn't sleep: I was awake with him for an hour and a half. Now, today, if he wants he can nap as long as he's able. But I still have to go to work and can't get back that hour and a half of lost sleep. Of course he's also not getting a zero on the assignment and a note in his permanent record.

The Wire
I'm five episodes into season one of The Wire, and while I recognize it as a good show, I'm a long way off from understanding why a fairly large number of people call it the greatest show (or one of the greatest shows) ever.

Reader-Response and Moral Reading

Reader-response Theory discusses reading in terms of "experience," "transaction," or "relationship." It also recognizes the role the reader brings to the text: as a work of literature barely exists outside the mind of the reader, it is worthwhile to examine the reader's participation. It is perhaps the most honest way to read: it doesn't pretend at the objective analysis that other critical approaches may. It requires me to understand that the way I read is but one mode of reading.

Reader-response Theory also recognizes the impact of reading. While it may focus on what the reader brings to the text, it also does not treat the text as an artifact, sealed in a vacuum. Reader-response Theory fully embraces the reality that the text brings something to the reader. We can be deeply, fundamentally changed by what we read.

We might also recognize the morality a reader brings to the reading experience. I am not an Aestheticist: my interest in literature is not to treat the work of literature as an aesthetic creation devoid of moral meaning. I read as a moral being, and I explore art for its moral meaning. That does not mean attaching the author's morality to the text, as Daniel Green recognizes one shouldn't, but exploring moral meaning in the text. Whatever personal failings a writer has does not detract from my reading of that writer's work (though as I'm writing here of the legitimacy of subjective modes of reading, who am I to say another reader must ignore the author's life?).

My most prominent ethical realities are in my embrace of pacifism and my advocacy for animal rights (I was initially going to call them ethical "stances," but they are not mere poses; they are very deep ways of living and thinking that infuse my everyday life). As a reader, I cannot put those ethics aside (that doesn't mean I can't develop an interpretation separate from those ethics--my point here is the reading experience). As I read Golding's Lord of the Flies, a story which explores human nature and violence, I certainly read it as a pacifist. It would be stupid to think I could set aside my opposition to violence while reading the story.

Torrential Downpour

Two thoughts on John Donne's Divine Meditations
1.Donne's religious poetry includes serious doubt and questioning. Divine Meditation #7 begins: "At the round earth's imagined corners..." Immediately there is the recognition that a scientific model of the earth does not match the biblical model of the earth. And #7 ends with "Teach me how to repent; for that's as good/ As if thou hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood." If? In Christian theology, forgiveness of sins was sealed with the blood of Christ, yet here Donne suggests some doubt of that. In #9, Donne questions religious doctrine on sin/reason and on forgiveness/wrath, then takes a pose of humility...but leaves the questions hanging there. And in #13, he says of the image of Christ on the cross, "And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,/ Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?"

2. Donne has two poetic careers: the early songs which were often rather bawdy, and the later religious poems. But he never really left the sexual imagery behind, did he? Divine Meditation #14, perhaps the best one, contains some powerful imagery of God overtaking the poet, and ends with the request for God to "ravish" the speaker. #18 deals with finding the Church on earth, and suggests that the true bride of Christ would be "open to most men."

Novels
I realized something absurd: in the past ten months, the only novels I've read in their entirety were by Dostoevsky. I've encountered no novelists but Dostoevsky since I finished Gregory Maguire's Son of a Witch last May. None! Now I've certainly read a good deal of drama, poetry, and non-fiction in that time, and Dostoevsky does write rather long novels, so it's not like I haven't been reading a lot. But that's still a little weird to me. So from now until September, I'll only read novels that are around 200-300 pages long, and each novel I read has to be by a different author (I'm starting with Graham Greene's The Quiet American). And of course I'll continue to read drama, poetry, and non-fiction.

Mostly Vegan
The preparations are happening: on April 1st, I'm again going vegan. I'm not going to make a public deal about it (most of my friends and family don't read this blog), but I'm taking the step. I'm "mostly vegan" because I might take it easy with honey, and because on special occasions that are a bit outside my control, I may be a mere vegetarian (like my sister's wedding). But starting April 1st, I'll mostly be consuming fruits and vegetables. I'm very excited.

Theory and Reading
Reader-Response Theory, in my opinion, essentially allows me to read a work of literature in any way I choose. How can I limit my modes of reading to one? I read any work as a Humanist, as a Marxist, as a Feminist, or as a devotee of any other theory I've ever encountered. We can hold multiple thoughts, multiple frameworks, multiple ideas in our heads. I can read a book both as Harold Bloom would want me to and as a Marxist would want me to at the very same time.

The only theory I have little time for is Aestheticism (as I've suggested before). The work must mean more to me than appreciation of art for its own sake; I'm not nearly so interesting in exploring the aesthetics of any work as the ideas of the work. Perhaps I'm a bit of a Moralist as a reader. But that, too, is what Reader-Response is about: recognizing our own subjective modes of reading. My lack of interest in an Aesthetic approach to literature is my own, and I recognize that others do not, need not, should not read literature just the way I do. One of my great frustrations is when people universalize their personal modes of reading, claiming everybody should read literature the same way they do, turning their subjective preferences into literary rules.

A little reader-response

Yesterday I was observing class run by a professor who's really got a handle on and dedication to Reader-response theory. I try to foster discussion and student response in literature courses, but I learned more watching this one class than I could have imaginined. Already I'm trying to incorporate what he does into what I do.

During this class Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" was discussed, and I also read two other poems on father-son relationships (written by the son): Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Henry Taylor's "Breakings."

As you may have heard, my life changed a little bit this week. I think every time I've read literature on father-son relationships, I've thought of it exclusively from the son's perspective. This week, perhaps for the first time, I started thinking about the father. What the sons said about their fathers in the poem made me think about how the fathers felt about life and their sons.

I don't think it's possible to pretend that who and what we are as people has no influence on how we read. That's silly. The only way we can read is as ourselves, and everything we are, our identity, is based on such a wicked combination of place, time, experience, background, and relationships that we cannot avoid interpreting a poem from our identity.

Expectation and Art

Last night, my wife and I were watching episodes of Deadwood. We were watching disc 5, and disc 6 is still in the mail. As episode 12 came to an end, we talked about how much closure there was (with necessary tension and ambiguity still present), how that would have worked as a good final episode for the season. And then we realized: that was the final episode of the season. Disc 6 would just be special features.

We would have watched the episode with completely different expectations if we had known it was the season’s last episode. But those expectations altered how we experienced the episode.

This is what we sometimes ignore: our preconceived expectations of a work of art before the experience of the work of art. If you go to The Passion of the Christ expecting to see the life of Christ, you’ll probably be disappointed; if you go expecting only to see his suffering and nothing else, you might be surprised and pleased by what else you get out of it (putting aside religious affiliations, or at least attempting to, I would defend this film as a work of art any day). We all have the experience of hearing about a particular writer or book, and having ideas about that writer or book, and having those ideas change drastically when we experience the writer or book. Almost everything we experience we first get previewed: we see the commercials for the movies, see the commercials for the TV shows, read the backs of the books.

We’re fools if we think that we can objectively experience any work of art without preconceived perceptions affecting our experience. Even if you know who the writer of a book is, or who the director of a film is, you will go in with certain expectations. You might be willing to make apologies for a writer or director you respect, whereas experiencing the work without knowledge of the writer or director might lead you to disparage the work. You can’t escape it, and that’s why the New Critics are wrong. All works of art exist in a context, if only the context in which you experience it.

Thoughts on many subjects

The Book as Sacred Container of Knowledge
In preparing to move, I have already filled 10 boxes of books. I estimate 3-5 more boxes.

Many of these books I've already read and have no intention to read again (though as an English professor, I can't know whether I might use something for class, attempt to write an article, or go back to Grad School). Many others I have never read and have no desire or intention to read.

And yet, I cannot bring myself to give away, or sell, or throw away these books. They seem to represent some ideal, some idealization of knowledge, or a spiritual intellectual quest.


The Book Itself and Criticism
Reader-Response Criticism asks us to examine the reading experience itself. To do so does not strictly involve a relationship with the text (or rather, it involves a wider examination of the experience with the text than is typically given).

Is the paper clean and fresh, or is it yellowed and wrinkled? What is the style of the font? What is the size of the font? How many words are on a single page (or how much time passes between page turns)?

These non-text text issues have a bigger impact on our reading experience than we realize. The solemnity, the seriousness, the formality, the humor, the dignity of a text is often based on the font style and size, on the spacing of letters on the page.

Bias
I'm O.K., You're Biased, by Daniel Gilbert

I hate when people objectify their artistic biases. Some people essentially transform their subjective tastes on film or literature into objective systems for evaluating film or literature.

One reason I embrace Reader-Response Criticism is because it recognizes that the reader plays a role in understanding a work of literature. By accepting the reader's role, a Reader-Response Critic admits to biases in interpretation. Awareness of these biases leads to useful interpretations. Naively pretending that biases do not exist is not a helpful way to interpret art.

Adaptation: staying true to the spirit, not the letter
One of the most memorable scenes in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest occurs when McMurphy gets Chief Bromden to play basketball.

This scene doesn't really occur in the book. McMurphy briefly gets the men on the ward to form a basketball team, but it is short-lived and doesn't feature McMurphy doing much with Chief Bromden.

However, this scene stays true to the spirit of the book, and simply makes the development in the novel visual. In the book, Chief Bromden gradually develops sanity, pride, independence, courage, and strength thanks to McMurphy. It is difficult to film the first person narration of Chief Bromden, thus difficult to show this slow development. The film simply includes this scene to make visual and brief the long development of the novel. In two scenes, we see Bromden (and all the men of the ward) grow and change.

Film adaptations must simply find ways to show us things that only the depth of a novel can truly provide. The novel offers an experience no other artform is capable of. Good adaptations (such as Cuckoo's) show this depth effectively; bad adaptations fail.

Gender construction
I spend an inordinate amount of time considering the meaning of gender identity and behavior. I believe that gender is largely socially constructed, but I also believe it would be foolish to ignore scientific knowledge of biology and chemistry. It is extremely difficult to separate social construction of gender from biological differences between men and women. Perhaps it is impossible. I've found Deborah Blum's "The Gender Blur: Where does Biology End and Society Take Over?" an interesting starting point to reflect on these issues.


Old themes are not new
I don't mind that movies like "Down in the Valley" get made, but do we really have to pretend that a film deconstructing the mythology of the Western is something new and edgy? You want to deconstruct the Western, you can start with The Wild Bunch and High Plains Drifter and Blazing Saddles and pretty much every Western made since. Let's not contend that such an effort is something dark and newly necessary.

Furthermore, let's not pretend that what Ed Norton has to say about the film is something new and edgy and dark, either. He says the movie

"is about the lack of a spiritual center, the lack of authenticity, and about a person needing a fantasy to escape the banality of modern existence. It's about a person saying, 'The way we live is so inauthentic, the spirit of things is gone.' It's the desire to escape the constraints of modern pavement."

Are we talking about T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" here? Or any number of movies made in the last 40 years? Seriously, start picking out movies you've seen that this passage could be describing.

Nothing irks me more than those who act like something derivative and done is something new and creative.