{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2025", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2025, "subject": "Readerly/writerly", "messages": 5, "voices": 3, "first": "1999-12-13T10:30:01+00:00", "last": "1999-12-16T14:11:23+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jonathan Laidlow", "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk" }, "date": "1999-12-13T10:30:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Readerly/writerly", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello folks,\n\njust dropped in with some semi-random thoughts inspired by Jim \nand Jeremy's recent discussion of readerly/writerly text and that \nwhole lit crit theory thing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Writerly text: is ourselves writing (eg., surfing the Web, the narrative\nthat is created). Self-consciously aware of its own artifice and its\n(failed) attempts at realism.\n\nReaderly text: meaning is stable, transmitted to the reader, dominating" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "First off, repeat after me:\n\n\t\"Il y a _beaucoup_ de merde dehors le texte.\"\n\nSecond, \"dominating\" is precisely what we readers want a lot of the time.\nAs Dana Gioia once said introducing the poet Nina Cassian, \"What we really\nwant to do when we read a new poet is _surrender_.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One thing that always bothers me about Foucault (and out of all the \npost-structuralist types he's my favourite) is that his history is a little, \ner, vague. There's a line in his 'What is an Author?' which basically \nstates that 'around about the Enlightenment X happened' - when \nexactly? (and by the by, Barthes wrote 'Death of the Author'). So our \nfirst step is putting the post-structuralists into context. Foucault is \ntrying to articulate what he wants from a new late-C20 form of \nwriting, and thus he must differentiate it from the 'old' - hence the \nbinary oppositions . Both Barthes and Foucault are usually read as \ncriticising the old restricted, dominating forms of writing against the \nnew pluralist 'writerly' forms which they envisage. While I'm unsure \nabout Barthes, I think its a disservice to read Foucault like this - yes \nthere is an almost utopian desire to liberate texts from the old \nstrictures but there is also an acceptance that these will merely be \nreplaced by new and different kinds of strictures ('tho hopefully \nmore honest)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If we approach a text as a writerly text it is not\npossible or desirable to start identifying fixed\nmeanings or metanarratives (\"Wolfe just does track\nthe gospels\"). In a writerly text, the reader is\nin control." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No - I can't agree - the fixed meanings and metanarratives can be \nfound they just cannot necessarily be merged into one over-riding \n'meaning' for the entire text. The meanings co-exist, complementing \nand contradicting themselves, but leaving it for the reader to put \nthem together how she sees fit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--Is it possible to achieve the writerly text or is\nit dependent on the prevailing social relations?\nBarthes is supposed to have identified the\nreaderly text as the dominant mode under capital." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Cause readerly texts are bad and capital(ism) is bad. If one comes out of\nthe Stalin-besotted milieu that gave us Barthes' generation of French\nintellectuals, that is. But I think the real problem with this particular\ntheory is that poststructuralists don't really get the texture of pleasure.\nTo wit:\n\nWolfe compares the writer/reader relationship to the torturer/client\nrelationship, perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek. I would offer a different\ncomparison: bondage of the sexual kind. Meaning the consensual practices\nthat dominants and submissives get up to when they find each other,\nincluding the whole apparatus of safe words and trust-building measures\nthat take place before and/or outside \"the game.\" The dominant is\ncertainly, um, dominant. And the submissive is dominated. That's what the\nsubmissive wants. That is what the submissive _permits_. It is, moreover,\nthe dominant's _duty_." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nice description. I think this ties in well with all that we've said about \nWolfe and Modernism. I don't believe that Wolfe abdicates control \nof his texts to the reader in any complete sense. Sure, he sets up \ndummy levels of narrative to distance the reader from any secure \nnarrative centre, but there are ways through the narrative. Not sure \nthat Wolfe's narrators are strong enough to be described as the \ndominant partners though - they are peculiarly slippery." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What poststructuralists decry as the \"authority\" of a text is precisely\nwhat most of us want most of the time." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I always thought that the point was not to accept authority blindly, but \nto analyse the way authority is constructed before accepting it (even \nif only tentatively. Post-structuralism does not necessarily condemn \nthe notion of authority, merely contextualise it, and accept that a text \n(I prefer the concrete term 'book' to this work/text confusion - it \nallows covers, introductions, footnotes, and artwork to have an \nauthority that co-exists with the linguistic units) may have multiple \nauthorities. What is the authority of Severian for example? Does he \npossess the same kind of narrative authority that Gene Wolfe does?\n\n We want a sense that the writer" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "knows what the hell he or she is talking about. Indeed, textual authority\ntends to vary inversely as the number of books thrown across the room in\ndisgust. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well yes, but what about the narrator? True to his torturer \nprofession, Sev is a very controlling narrator, who sometimes \nmisleads us. But he makes mistakes. He may not know what the \nhell he is talking about, but I'm sure GW does. There are always \nextra levels of authority - no text contains just one dominant mode of \nauthority, although the narrative structure may try to convince you \nthat it is otherwise. You can read all of Long Sun as straight \nobjective third person narrative, and then be blown away when you \nfind out that it is actually Horn's literary construction of Silk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "According to Foucault (\"The death of the author,\" 1969):" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Barthes wrote 'Death'. Foucault wrote the far more interesting 'What \nis an author?'" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "..implies that the notion of the author is a historical\nconstruct (prior, we looked at heroes, presumably actors\nin Greek myth and tragedy)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Of course it is! Despite everything that's been drawn from \nFoucault's words I maintain that his essay does not (unlike Barthes) \ndestroy the need for authors. He expects us to understand the \norigins of the concept, and show how the 'author' of a text works to \nguarantee the authority of the book. What kind of authority would \nKilgore Trout's 'The Shadow of the Torturer' possess?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "BTW, in a trivial sense, the notion of the author _is_ a historical\nconstruct - used to be there were no authors (no writing frex), then there\nwere. But what have we really said when we say something is a historical\nconstruct? I think the answer is, Sometimes a lot; Sometimes not much. In\nthe case of the notion of the author, I favor the latter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Disagree here - perhaps from having done too much boring literary \nresearch, but the nature of authors and their authority has changed \nmany times. In medieval times an author was a quite different thing -\n he could be someone who has rewritten or annotated a prior text, \nhe could be an 'auctor' referred to as a guarantee of the veracity of \ncertain statements, scientific, religious or otherwise. This guarantee \nwas contained in the *name* of the auctor, not in his words. \nNowadays we cite authorities and the name marks the place where \nwe can find objective proof for our assertions, especially in \nscientific debates. In the eighteenth century there was a distinction \nbetween authors who wrote for the greater good and were real \nliterary craftsmen (Pope's saving his work for seven years) and the \ncommercial Grub Street 'hacks' who in many cases did not have \nthe inherited fortunes which allowed them to concentrate on small \ncirculation poetery and instead had to write for money in the forms \nthat would generate the most sales." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "..efforts to contain a text are problematic.." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This assumes you want to contain a text. Why do we reread \nfavourite texts? We read them because we constantly find new \nthings in them alongside the familiar. Reading is always a \nproblematic experience, but we create a dominate reading which is \nthe least contradictive. This is containment, of a sort, and I believe \nwe do it all the time. The point is that our containment is not \npermanent, merely a device of reading which allows us to construct \na coherent narrative.\n\n[wasn't too sure about the whole weasel thing, but liked this bit:] " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Weasels can even give us a handle on the textual property of multiplicity -\nthere may be a bunch of cages suitable for any given weasel. But there will\nbe a lot more where the weasel doesn't fit, or fits poorly, or gets lost in\nall that room." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes - the problem with simple post-modern pluralism is that we \ncannot read BotNS as a cookbook, or a treatise on shelving. The \nreason for this is that the text possesses certain qualities which \nlimit the plural possibilities - one of these is the author. What \nFoucault does is to try to make clear the way the author limits the \npossible significations of a book. I maintain that this isn't a bad \nthing - it is neither good nor bad. Our knowledge that GW wrote \nBotNS produces a very different reading (partly because of the \nstature of our author) to the same book as written by Kilgore Trout." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "..historically, authors emerged as a category when\nthey became subject to punishment for their work." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is an example of Foucault flipping the familiar argument \non its head for us (cf his arguments in 'A History of Sexuality' where \nhe flips the trad Victorian repressive hypothesis on its head). \nWhether historical evidence supports this discursive trick is another \nmatter...." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "..relevant to today's efforts at erasing the author\n(double blind peer review) which is actually just an\nacknowledgement of the power of the author (and\nthe author always sneaks back in anyway)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hey, good point! But if the author sneaks back in, does that mean the\nauthor isn't dead after all?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the utopian/socialist goal of a new kind of writing in post-\nstructuralist theory was always the weakest point. What intrigues \nme is the scope for questioning concepts of authorship and \nauthority which are too often taken for granted. That doesn't mean \nwe must erase their existence, merely understand the way we read \nthe 'new Gene Wolfe novel' in different ways to the 'new Jeffery \nArcher novel', and the way the presence of the author has a bearing \non our reading of their narrators." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "For Foucault, neither texts (discourses) nor authors\nare \"unitary\"--neither the subject nor discourse is stable." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But they can be stabilised in the reading process. One of my \nfavourite bits of post-modern theoretical writing is a little comment \nby Frederic Jameson about the way late 20th century conspiracy \ntheories are the last gasp of those who cannot accept pluralism. \nInstead they manage to construct a narrative out of disparate and \ncontradictory evidence to make the chaotic events of the twentieth \ncentury make sense.\n\nBut this is what we always do - we construct narratives out of the \nmaterial at hand, guided by the author/obstructed by the author. \n\nJust because we can't quantifiably have a 'correct' reading, it \ndoesn't necessarily follow that we can't distinguish between 'good' \nand 'bad' readings. \n\nAt this juncture we probably need a quote from Whitman's 'Song of \nMyself'. Anyone got it to hand?\n\nJonathan\nVisit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource\nhttp://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm\nJonathan Laidlow\nUniversity of Birmingham, UK" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeremy Crampton", "address": "jcrampto at osf1.gmu.edu" }, "date": "1999-12-15T12:49:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Readerly/writerly", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Jonathan,\n\nThanks for the interesting comments. As I indicated in my original post\nthese are some potentially interesting ideas but I'm not sure how to apply\nthem. Your input goes a long way to helping.\n\nJim's thoughts about readers *wanting* to be dominated seems right (and the\nS+M metaphor is cool, if perhaps something already covered by somebody like\nCamille Paglia or Judith Butler). But domination is usually accounted an\nundesirable condition. As Orwell knew, look at how he drew a negative\npicture of the proles complicit in their own domination in _Nineteen\nEighty-Four_.\n\nThis was perhaps then one of the radical implications of Foucault, that he\noffered a chance to challenge and resist the power structure of the text,\nor better, of discourse (by identifying its breaks and disunities, eg of\nthe subject or the author)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "new pluralist 'writerly' forms which they envisage. While I'm unsure \nabout Barthes, I think its a disservice to read Foucault like this - yes \nthere is an almost utopian desire to liberate texts from the old \nstrictures but there is also an acceptance that these will merely be \nreplaced by new and different kinds of strictures ('tho hopefully \nmore honest)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What's wrong with this? I think for F. the point was to resist or to\ntransgress, not to free oneself up from power. \nHe did distinguish between \"power\" and \"domination\".. power was always\naccompanied by resistance, especially at the sharp end where it was being\napplied, but as for domination, well not much room for resistance as a\nslave or a woman in an abusive relationship (his examples). But perhaps\neven there...\n\nJim:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "What poststructuralists decry as the \"authority\" of a text is precisely\nwhat most of us want most of the time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I always thought that the point was not to accept authority blindly, but \nto analyse the way authority is constructed before accepting it (even \nif only tentatively. Post-structuralism does not necessarily condemn \nthe notion of authority, merely contextualise it, and accept that a text \n(I prefer the concrete term 'book' to this work/text confusion - it \nallows covers, introductions, footnotes, and artwork to have an \nauthority that co-exists with the linguistic units) may have multiple \nauthorities. What is the authority of Severian for example? Does he \npossess the same kind of narrative authority that Gene Wolfe does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I prefer Foucault's term \"discourse\" which is somewhat above the level of\nthe statement, though you have to plough through _Archaeology of knowledge_\nto work this out (one of his last structuralist books thank goodness).\nDiscourse is what is formed by the archive, the set of rules which\ndetermine what can be said, remembered, appropriated, re-used or forgotten.\nAnyway, the point is that there is authority in discourse, it frames simply\nwhat can be said or how it is said. His examples are madness, criminality,\nand sexuality.\n\nBy the way the upper quote is from Jim not me." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "According to Foucault (\"The death of the author,\" 1969):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Barthes wrote 'Death'. Foucault wrote the far more interesting 'What \nis an author?'" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sorry, sorry! " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "structuralist theory was always the weakest point. What intrigues \nme is the scope for questioning concepts of authorship and \nauthority which are too often taken for granted. That doesn't mean \nwe must erase their existence, merely understand the way we read \nthe 'new Gene Wolfe novel' in different ways to the 'new Jeffery \nArcher novel', and the way the presence of the author has a bearing \non our reading of their narrators." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This seems useful.\n\nThere is a great Foucault discussion list:\nhttp://lists.village.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/spoons/listinfo.pl?list=foucault.i\nnfo\n\nThanks again Jonathan. If you're in Chester next week I'll buy you a pint!\nI'll be home for the holidays.\n__\nJeremy W. Crampton\t\t http://geog.gmu.edu jcrampto at gmu.edu\nDept. of Geography & Earth Science\n[MS 1E2]\t\t\t\t’Tis true; there’s magic in the web of it.\nGeorge Mason University\t\t\t\t\t--Othello (III.iv.69)\nFairfax, Va 22030" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Henley", "address": "jlhenley at erols.com" }, "date": "1999-12-15T21:44:25+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Re: Readerly/writerly", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-----Original Message-----\nFrom: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On\nBehalf Of Jeremy Crampton\n\nJim's thoughts about readers *wanting* to be dominated seems\nright (and the\nS+M metaphor is cool, if perhaps something already covered by\nsomebody like\nCamille Paglia or Judith Butler). But domination is usually accounted an\nundesirable condition. As Orwell knew, look at how he drew a negative\npicture of the proles complicit in their own domination in _Nineteen\nEighty-Four_.\n\n\n\nWhat's wrong with this? I think for F. the point was to resist or to\ntransgress, not to free oneself up from power.\nHe did distinguish between \"power\" and \"domination\".. power was always\naccompanied by resistance, especially at the sharp end where it was being\napplied, but as for domination, well not much room for resistance as a\nslave or a woman in an abusive relationship (his examples)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Indeed there's not. But that's precisely the problem - Foucault and too\nmany po-mo's don't seem to be able to tell the difference between chattel\nslavery and the compulsion to stay up until one finds out what's going to\nhappen with Councilor Lemur. To the extent that they deny or overlook the\ndifference, they are simply being fatuously provocative. To everything turn\nturn turn, moderation in all things etc. A society where all of life is\nsubject to military regimentation is appalling to contemplate. A society\nwhere the _army_ is subject to military regimentation is to be desired. A\nsociety where you get to choose whether you join the army in the first\nplace, and have predictible opportunities to leave it after you join, is\nbetter yet.\n\nOne of the great things about Jonathan's postmodernism is that it seems\nmuch more nuanced than that of his forebears (Foucault, Barthes etc)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Discourse is what is formed by the archive, the set of rules which\ndetermine what can be said, remembered, appropriated, re-used or\nforgotten.\nAnyway, the point is that there is authority in discourse, it\nframes simply\nwhat can be said or how it is said. His examples are madness,\ncriminality, and sexuality." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The term discourse is nebulous enough that there's no arguing with it. But\nto the extent that discourse is made up of texts or (Jonathan's term)\nbooks, the situation is quite fluid. For one thing, one of the tasks of\nauthorship is to find new things to say, and ways to say things that have\nbeen previously unsayable. Let me be the first to aver that this ain't so\neasy. However, the full flowering of whiggish Britain did not prevent\nCAPITAL from being written. Nor did CAPITAL (or the Popular Front) keep\nHayek from writing THE ROAD TO SERFDOM. TBoTNS did not (alas) foreclose the\ncareers of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The new criticism did not stop\nLentricchia (or whoever it was) from finding an aporia at the center of\nthat Lucy poem, and the domination of the Academy by Lentricchia's fellows\nactually called the neotraditionalist \"The New Criterion\" into being.\nTextual authority in itself is multivalent and provisional. A political\napparatus can limit access to texts, establishing a favorite set's\nhegemony, but you still end up with Luther's theses and _The Cancer Ward_.\n\nThe dominant discourses of the bourgeois West on madness, crime and\nsexuality did not prevent Foucault's big long books, BTW. But to return to\nWolfe, TBOTNS is full of madness, crime and sexuality. How would you say\nWolfe's view of these things compares to Foucault's?\n\n[Speaking of multivalence, my spell-checker had some fun suggestions for\nthis post...]\n\nBest,\n\n\nJim\n ****************************\n \"I once was lost\n\tbut now I'm just blind\"\n\t\t\t- Kid Rock" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Henley", "address": "jlhenley at erols.com" }, "date": "1999-12-15T23:38:21+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Readerly/writerly", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-----Original Message-----\nFrom: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On\nBehalf Of Jonathan Laidlow\n\n\nNice description. I think this ties in well with all that we've\nsaid about\nWolfe and Modernism. I don't believe that Wolfe abdicates control\nof his texts to the reader in any complete sense. Sure, he sets up\ndummy levels of narrative to distance the reader from any secure\nnarrative centre, but there are ways through the narrative. Not sure\nthat Wolfe's narrators are strong enough to be described as the\ndominant partners though - they are peculiarly slippery." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "First off, thanks for the compliment, though Jeremy certainly adduces some\nliterary forebears for the analogy. I don't recall reading anything by\nPaglia specifically comparing reading/writing to bondage & discipline, but\nI have read a lot of Paglia and I was certainly working from her theories\nof pleasure. Plus, I've read a lot of porn...\n\nNow, anent Wolfe and his narrators and dominance and authority: To me it's\nless a matter of controlling interpretation than controlling attention. The\nsheer gothic thrill of Dr. Crane's encounter with the real Councilor Lemur\nis anterior to any interpretation we make of it. A book dominates to the\nextent it commands your time - including time away from the book. (I recall\nbeing \"dominated\" by Arthur C. Clarke's _Imperial Earth_ as a kid, but I go\nyears without thinking about it and remember nothing except a terrific\nset-piece description of insomnia. OTOH, I spend entirely too much time\nthinking about the Sun books, even ones I haven't read yet. frex, I'm\nassuming that Blue will turn out to be Ushas and Green either Skuld or\nLune, all before even reading OBW. This ties in with what you later have to\nsay about Wolfe's authority as a writer - I'm being controlled by a book I\nhaven't even opened. But Christmas is coming!)\n\nIn other words, Wolfe is the dom and I am his sub. \n\nCan a book dominate in the sense of being its own interpretive authority?\nIs that the idea? Is there an example of such a book? Agree with you about\nthe slipperiness of the Wolfe narrators that I've encountered." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(I prefer the concrete term 'book' to this work/text confusion - it\nallows covers, introductions, footnotes, and artwork to have an\nauthority that co-exists with the linguistic units)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hey, this is excellent!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What is the authority of Severian for example? Does he\npossess the same kind of narrative authority that Gene Wolfe does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Of course not. Sev lies. \n\nI'm inclined to say that Sev doesn't possess the same kind of narrative\nauthority that Wolfe does purely because Sev is a fictional construct. If\nwe want to get all modernist, let's say Sev is _more_ of a fictional\nconstruct than Wolfe is. I might be inclined to say that Sev _constitutes_\nWolfe's narrative authority, but it's more than just Sev - it's all the\nstuff that makes us go, \"Whoah!\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well yes, but what about the narrator? True to his torturer\nprofession, Sev is a very controlling narrator, who sometimes\nmisleads us. But he makes mistakes. He may not know what the\nhell he is talking about, but I'm sure GW does. There are always\nextra levels of authority - no text contains just one dominant mode of\nauthority, although the narrative structure may try to convince you\nthat it is otherwise. You can read all of Long Sun as straight\nobjective third person narrative, and then be blown away when you\nfind out that it is actually Horn's literary construction of Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, not now I can't...\n\nActually, you weren't the one that gave up that game for me; it was those\ndarn cover designers at Tor. My fault for saving the Long Sun books until\nthis month.\n\nAnyway, I agree with everything you have to say, though I would suggest\nthat it's also possible to be _disconcerted_ by finding out that LS is\nactually Horn's literary construction of Silk. In fact, I think Wolfe\nproves that he knows what he's doing when he has Horn immediately set about\nreestablishing his authority, to the extent Horn can. Were Horn to take the\nattitude, \"I made it all up, your interpretation is as good as mine, tee\nhee,\" the ending might feel a little too much like \"And then I awoke from\nmy dream.\"\n\nAnd this may be what separates Wolfe's books from those of some authors who\nmake a _program_ of producing \"writerly\" texts in Barthes' sense - too\noften the project comes across as merely flip." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of course it is! Despite everything that's been drawn from\nFoucault's words I maintain that his essay does not (unlike Barthes)\ndestroy the need for authors. He expects us to understand the\norigins of the concept, and show how the 'author' of a text works to\nguarantee the authority of the book. What kind of authority would\nKilgore Trout's 'The Shadow of the Torturer' possess?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A fair but not trivial question. I'm assuming we're considering this _as\nif_ the fictional Kilgore Trout were real - we're not considering the\nquestion of what happens if Vonnegut writes a story reproducing the entire\ntext of TBOTNS by Trout, or even Philip Jose Farmer writing TBOTNS while\npretending to be KT. (One knew that _someone_ was pretending to be KT.)\n\nSo, here's where I may differ with Foucault and even, gulp, you. I think\nthat there's an extent to which an author constructs his authority as he\ngoes: the reader picks up the book, making a provisional grant of\nattention. What the author does with that initial grant determines the\ncourse of the relationship. Now, I can't deny that some writers come to\nsome readers with a fair amount of credit already established. (Did I say\n\"grant?\" I meant \"loan.\") You give them more chances. You may be more\ninclined to go back to their books if they don't grab you the first time.\n(Am I starting to get all reader-responsey?) But TBOTNS works to establish\nits authority as it goes, and would do so even if it came under David\nSalvatore's by-line - we'd just never know it..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\nscientific debates. In the eighteenth century there was a distinction\nbetween authors who wrote for the greater good and were real\nliterary craftsmen (Pope's saving his work for seven years) and the\ncommercial Grub Street 'hacks' who in many cases did not have\nthe inherited fortunes which allowed them to concentrate on small\ncirculation poetery and instead had to write for money in the forms\nthat would generate the most sales." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As opposed to now... (Poor John Clute. It's hard work being defensive.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This assumes you want to contain a text. Why do we reread\nfavourite texts? We read them because we constantly find new\nthings in them alongside the familiar. Reading is always a\nproblematic experience, but we create a dominate reading which is\nthe least contradictive. This is containment, of a sort, and I believe\nwe do it all the time. The point is that our containment is not\npermanent, merely a device of reading which allows us to construct\na coherent narrative." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure. Again, I think of textual \"domination\" being that which impels us to\nspend the time establishing interpretations and coherent narratives at all.\nBut I don't disagree with any of what you say here." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[wasn't too sure about the whole weasel thing, but liked this bit:]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hey, watch what you say about the weasel!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Weasels can even give us a handle on the textual property of\nmultiplicity -" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What\nFoucault does is to try to make clear the way the author limits the\npossible significations of a book. I maintain that this isn't a bad\nthing - it is neither good nor bad. Our knowledge that GW wrote\nBotNS produces a very different reading (partly because of the\nstature of our author) to the same book as written by Kilgore Trout." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This came up before. But this seems a good place to adduce Borges' \"Pierre\nMenard.\" The narrator of that story claims that Menard's rewrite of\nCervantes produces a radically new text. But Borges makes it pretty clear\nthat the narrator of that story is a jerk, and maybe a fool. So..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That doesn't mean\nwe must erase their existence, merely understand the way we read\nthe 'new Gene Wolfe novel' in different ways to the 'new Jeffery\nArcher novel', and the way the presence of the author has a bearing\non our reading of their narrators." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the presence of the author is a sign of what ways of reading might\nand might not work. The problem is not so much that we won't try to read\n_The Prodigal Daughter_ as \"a powerful meditation on God, time, love etc\"\nbecause it's by Jeffrey Archer. Rather, the book itself suggests to us that\nwe'd be wasting our time to do so. In a sense, the nature of Jeffrey\nArcher's authority is something that gets constructed from the texts\nthemselves.\n\nAnd in the meantime, Wow, that fight with the alzabo is really something.\n(I'm feeling compelled to stress the thrills&chills values of Wolfe's books\nthis week.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But they can be stabilised in the reading process. One of my\nfavourite bits of post-modern theoretical writing is a little comment\nby Frederic Jameson about the way late 20th century conspiracy\ntheories are the last gasp of those who cannot accept pluralism.\nInstead they manage to construct a narrative out of disparate and\ncontradictory evidence to make the chaotic events of the twentieth\ncentury make sense.\n\nBut this is what we always do - we construct narratives out of the\nmaterial at hand, guided by the author/obstructed by the author.\n\nJust because we can't quantifiably have a 'correct' reading, it\ndoesn't necessarily follow that we can't distinguish between 'good'\nand 'bad' readings." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is superb! I don't suppose you could manage to appear at the sacred\nwindows of every high school english class in the land, could you? It would\neliminate a host of sorrows." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At this juncture we probably need a quote from Whitman's 'Song of\nMyself'. Anyone got it to hand?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Um, \"I am Sarge. I disdain pulchritudes...\" ?\n\nBest,\n\n\nJim\n *****************************************\nWhat if we only get what we deserve?\n Somehow, I couldn't quite summon the nerve\"\n -- Costello/Bacharach" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jonathan Laidlow", "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk" }, "date": "1999-12-16T14:11:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) readerly/writerly", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Just because we can't quantifiably have a 'correct' reading, it\ndoesn't necessarily follow that we can't distinguish between 'good'\nand 'bad' readings.\nThis is superb! I don't suppose you could manage to appear at the sacred> windows \nof every high school english class in the land, could you? It would> eliminate a host of \nsorrows." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree too, but would add that it makes sense only within a community ofreaders that \nhas decided on some criteria for 'good' and 'bad'. Crowley's _Little, Big_ is almost \ncertainly not intended as Christian allegory, butif Jim Jordan enjoyed reading it that way, \nI wouldn't insist that his reading was 'bad,' particulary if he wasn't arguing that his was the \nonly'right' way to read it.\n\nJonathan replied:\n\nIntentions are a messy business - certainly multiple, and often unverifiable (even if GW \nwere to tell us his intentions for BotNS they may not have been his changeable thoughts \nat the time of writing, or his revised thoughts at the time of writing 'Otter'). If there is \nevidence in the text which Jim could marshall towards his argument then it would be what \nwe might call a 'good' reading (as a community of fellow readers of the text). Yet a \nsimple statement that it was a Christian allegory without supporting evidence might go \nsome way towards a 'bad' reading. \n\nUsing this argument we can 'contain multitudes' and accept each others variant readings \nas evidence of the slippery nature of linguistic units and their associated meanings.\n\nThere is of course the added problem of the nefarious 'context'. Those of my students \nwho've tackled 18th century satire without a knowledge of its specific resonances and \nconventions during that period invariably come a-cropper when they try to introduce \nmodern notions of satire. I heard a recent story about Germaine Greer's recent work on \nthe 17th century author Aphra Behn, where she argues that Behn had problems getting \ninto print because she was a woman. Brum's own expert on 17th century women's \nwriting and the early print indsutry pointed out that all writers of the period had difficulty \ngetting into print (in their relations with publishers), and the fact that she was a woman \nwas, in this case at least, incidental.\n\nIn the case of my satirical students, they may well have written something interesting on \nthe subject of satire, but it could not constitute a 'good' reading without some awareness \nof the nature of eighteenth-century satires.\n\nJonathan\nVisit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource\nhttp://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm\nJonathan Laidlow\nUniversity of Birmingham, UK" } ] } ] }