To me, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” suggests that sometimes it isn’t. But every time I hear that phrase used, it’s always with a vaguely reproving tone, as if to say, “It’s always a cigar. Take everything literally; don’t look beyond the surface.”
I was a an English major, and like all English majors, I read a lot of literary criticism—usually when I was doing research for term papers. I never, ever saw anything goofy like character names being spelled backwards or the symbolism of somebody’s hat. The criticism I read dealt with things like style, themes, influences, structure, historical context, etc. It was all solidly argued and supported with appropriate sources and citations.
It strikes me as weird that some folks in this thread are sure that literary criticism is bullshit, but they don’t cite any published literary criticism. Instead we’re hearing anecdotes (like Chuck’s story of trolling his high school English teacher) and hypothetical examples (like kitap imagining what would happen if he wrote a novel). Not that I expect a discussion of Harold Bloom or Mary McCarthy in a thread about pop culture, but you’d think people here would understand the difference between attacking a field and attacking a silly caricature of it. It’s like condemning the entire legal profession because you saw Jackie Chiles in a Seinfeld episode.
Did you never take a debate class in school? It’s pretty common, in those sorts of classes, to be assigned a position that you’re supposed to debate - even if you don’t actually support the position you’re asked to defend. Because the point is to learn how to debate, not how to arrive at the “correct” position on any given subject.
Does that make debate classes “meaningless bullshit?”
That’s not the question I asked, though. 99% of the time, when you’re reading a book, you don’t have the author at hand to tell you what they intended. What do you do then? Is it okay to look for symbolism in a work or not?
Does anything have a hidden meaning? Are there no authors, anywhere, at any time, who employ symbolism or allegory? Or are we only allowed to consider it when the author specifically points out that something is intended to be symbolic?
No, I’m not. I’m aware that Manson thought “Helter Skelter” was about race war. I’m unaware of the specific reasons why he thought that - which lyrics he thought were advocating/warning a race war, and why he thought those lyrics have that meaning. It’s possible - although, all things considered, highly unlikely - that I might find his argument for that interpretation compelling. Even if I did, however, I wouldn’t characterize it as “correct.” There isn’t a “correct” interpretation to art. Appreciating art isn’t about arriving at correct answers, it’s about understanding your own emotional and intellectual response to the art.
Any interpretation is valid if it’s not directly contradicted by the text. This does not mean that every interpretation is meaningless - there’s no logical connection between the premise and the conclusion there. Meaning can be personal. If a cheerful song makes you sad, because that song was your dead wife’s favorite song, that reaction is 100% valid, even if it’s entirely unconnected to the intent of the songwriters.
And “setting yourself up as the arbiter of what the story means,” misses the entire point of the theory. I’m the arbiter of my own thoughts and emotions. If a story evokes particular thoughts and emotions in me, those reactions are not “incorrect,” regardless of whether or not the author intended me to feel them.
Not professionally, and not nearly as much as I used to.
Are you suggesting that nobody who writes fiction could subscribe to reader-response theory?
I’m curious—have you read any actual, published literary criticism? Or is your entire concept of it based on a smart-aleck stunt you pulled in high school?
As others in this thread have already explained to you, you got that “A” for doing what’s expected in high school writing—you presented and supported an argument, and were graded on that. If you want to continue believing that you demolished the entire edifice of literary criticism because the teacher didn’t call you out on your bullshit, try submitting your essay to American Literary History or some other peer-reviewed journal. I guarantee they won’t be as receptive as your teacher was.
The whole thing. I don’t believe in “truthiness” or “alternative facts” or “true from a certain point of view”. I believe that a work means what the author meant it to mean and nothing more. What you “read into” a story is no more relevant to the objective facts than you thinking a cloud looks like a puppy chasing a ball is relevant to a cloud being a floating patch of water droplets.
I equate this to face recognition software that, when fed a batch of faces finds that–lo and behold!–these people are criminals that I have on record! Except that they aren’t.
I am well aware that there is Literature (with the capital “L”) that contains Important Symbolism hidden in the details, but I would assert that for the vast majority of writing, someone is just trying to tell a story.
Camille Paglia has a similar interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey; she talks about it in the documentary 2001: The Making of a Myth. I don’t agree with it, but I can see where she’s coming from; the Discovery ship does look like a big sperm cell, and that baby shows up at the end.
Okay, but again - what do you do when you don’t have access to the author to confirm or deny a meaning? Also, how does your “only the author’s intent matters” approach handle the concept of an author failing to communicate his ideas? If someone writes a story that’s intended to be anti-racist, but employs a lot of racial stereotypes and racial assumptions, is the story anti-racist (because that’s the author’s intent) or racist (because it employs racist stereotypes)?
That’s a fair comparison. And, likewise, someone interrupting folks cloud gazing to explain pareidolia and meteorology is being about as useful to conversation as someone who says, “But what the author meant was…” It’s not that those subjects are worthless, they’re just not relevant to the conversation that’s actually happening.
Generally speaking (and there are exceptions) most people don’t apply this sort of analysis to pop culture, except as a gag. Flannery O’Connor wasn’t writing Superman radio serials, she was writing for “highbrow” literary publications.
You’d have a good point if postmodern or other esoteric critical theory was being inappropriately applied to an author “just trying to tell a story,” like John Grisham or Stephen King. As far as I know, that isn’t happening. If you scroll to the bottom of that webpage you cited, the examples include novels by William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker. I see nothing objectionable about applying postmodern literary criticism to postmodern works. “A work means what the author meant it to mean” is fine for popular fiction, but it doesn’t work well for something like Naked Lunch.
Anyway, this is turning into a thread hijack, so I’m going to drop it.
Well, “death of the author” is often applied to pop culture works, but not usually in the service of trenchant critical analysis. There’s not a lot of people out there saying, “I don’t care what George Lucas says, Luke Skywalker is a sperm!” but there are a lot of people who say, “I don’t care what George Lucas says, Jedi don’t get their Force powers from Midichlorians!” That’s a significantly worse “offense” than a black hat: it’s not just ignoring authorial intent, it’s ignoring the explicit text of the work.
But can anyone in this thread look into their hearts, and tell me, honestly, that they’re wrong?
I think everyone has the right to edit a story in their own mind. Reading a book, or watching a movie, I’ve often found myself thinking, “I didn’t like that part, so I’m going to ignore it.” I wouldn’t base any actual literary criticism on it, of course, but if it helps me enjoy it more, who’s going to stop me?
I agree, except for the “just” part. Literary criticism, at times, seems to consider actual storytelling to be almost an embarrassment, when in fact, stories are the most amazing thing in the world.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that there are a lot of people who only see in right and wrong. Not only that; they need the world to be that way. They try very hard to get things right, and once they’ve made it to the right side, everybody who doesn’t do it that way or think that way has to be wrong. If not, then why did they work so hard to get to be right? Why did they spend so much effort if it ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s upsetting to find out that sometimes there is no right answer, sometimes all the answers are right.
They’ll often qualify the discussion by saying things to like "yeah, yeah people can have different interpretations, but ultimately there is only one right explanation, and the reason we all aren’t on the same page is that we all don’t have all the information. Once all the information is considered, and considered in the proper fashion, we’ll all naturally arrive at the right answer.
There is a whole trend in fanfiction called “fix fic.” This is fans saying (often quite explicitly), “the actual text of the book/movie/tv show is wrong.” The series ended badly, the wrong characters got together, that guy shouldn’t have died, etc. The whole point of those kind of stories is not simply to play around in the world, like most fanfiction, but to actively correct what the source material “got wrong.”
