Re: No Exit & Sartre (was: Re: Help Constructing Fictional Cross-Religious Movement)

tomhcmi schrieb:
>
> Hi, everyone, and thanks for writing.
> nyra wrote:
> > "Patricia C. Wrede" schrieb:
> > > "nyra" <nyra@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:42F8EB03.EC7CDBCA@xxxxxxxxxx
> > > > tomhcmi schrieb:
> > > >> Ah, but he was just the Playwright!
> > > >> [snip]
> > > >> Any LitCrit professor could tell you that he or she (the LitCrit prof,
> > > >> that is) can tell what a piece of writing means better than the Author
> > > >> can.
> > > > That's their job.
> > > >
> > > > [snip well-reasoned probably valid point]
> > > Pointing out what is and isn't there, and noticing the different ways
> > > something can be interpreted, is a perfectly fine thing. Where I balk and
> > > dig in my heels is when the LitCrit folks start telling me what *I* meant
> > > and what *my* agenda was when I wrote the thing. ...
> > > [snip]
> > [snip idea I find questionable which might be right anyway]

I think that was the one which i could exemplify by the statement: 'I
read L.Trenker's "Der verlorene Sohn" as a modernised re-telling of
the parable in the Bible, Lk. 15, 11-32.' I don't definitely _know_
that this is what Trenker wanted (although the title suggests it)
since i only read the novel, but i am _truthful_ in saying that this
is the impression i got out of it. For a more complicated example, i
could babble about how i find the calling to the Grail in Wolfram's
"Parzival" to be similar to the "election out of mercy" to salvation
in the Pauline letters; this _is_ speculative interpretation of what's
going on here, but i find it can be enlightening as long as i keep in
mind that i'm talking about what happens in _my_ mind here, not about
"what the author[x] really meant".

[x] whom you may ask, but who hasn't given reliable answers for about
600 years now

> > > > [snip]
> > > [snip]
> > [snip]
> > > [snip]
> > [snip]
> > I don't feel fit [1] to defend critics who talk at length about how a
> > text gives us a gripping account of the author's personal prison
> > career when the author has never seen a prison from the inside; or
> > critics who speculate about childhood abuse suffered by the author.
>
> > I
> > _do_ get annoyed at the flippant sarcasm of 'oh, a professional critic
> > will _of course_ know better than the mere playwright';
>
> Nyra, how do you /know/ I was being 'flip'?*

I don't know, i assume. Now this carries the risk of
misunderstandings, but i prefer to assume and jump to conclusions than
spend an hour every morning reasoning whether the alarm clock really
beeps or whether it's just an artefact of my mind with no grounding in
reality.
If there _is_ a misunderstanding, it can be corrected, but 'how do you
/know/' doesn't convince me there was one in this case.

> > i perceive a
> > sort of anti-critic, anti-intellectual sentiment in it.
>
> > The person i
> > consider a _good_ critic will never claim to know _better_, but will
> > be able to shed light on aspects of a text which aren't obvious on a
> > superficial read. Occasionally even on aspects the author wasn't
> > entirely aware of or didn't even intend.
>
> That /is/ pretty good; but, to me, the /good/ critic is the one who can
>
> truthfully tell me whether or not I would enjoy the 'book'

I'm quite used to reading books which are a bit older or which carry
some additional baggage; and there i find it quite useful if someone
can give me additional information about the time the text was written
in, whom the author may have been parodising [y] ... A critique which
only tells me whether i'll like a book i've already read is worse than
useless for me.
The crits you describe _could_ be helpful in deciding to pick up/read
things i'm not aware of yet. Alas, most 'recently published' crits are
no more meaningful than the back cover blurbs by my standards.

[y] point in case: i quite enjoyed reading H.Heine's "Atta Troll", and
i enjoyed it quite a bit more than might otherwise have been because
there was an extensive commentary and a bunch of interpretative
thoughts included in the edition i bought. And that text is a mere 160
years old.

> The 'finding meaning' stuff is more an excuse to grant degrees to
> people who
> can't do math. [please just snip out the previous sentence if it makes
> you
> feel like 'flaming'.]

Well, if you think that it's just an easy way out for people with
second-class brains, i suggest you try to do this sort of thing
yourself. Ought to be laughably easy if you can do maths, right? And
no, i didn't get a degree out of this sort of exercise.

Anyway, if you thought the sentence was likely to attract flames but
didn't want to get flamed, why did you include it in the post?

> > [1] tempted, just because, yes. Fit, no.
>
> There are probably readers on this list who feel tempted, but not fit,

Erm. This was a footnote. I often put outrageously stupid nonsense in
them, see footnote [x] above. Perhaps i should add a disclaimer to
this effect somewhere.

--
Jos ei sika syö, niin kyllähän piika syö.
.

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