She’s the only one who witnesses it, outside the fantasy the world is perfectly, traumatically realistic, and the fantasy she has corresponds exactly to what one could imagine a person would use to cope with the things happening to her.
I don’t think the film decides whether it’s real or not–that question is not one the film treats as important. But I think the reading that it’s not real is right there on the surface, nothing to dig after.
They’re missing half the film, then. They’re watching something, but it’s not exactly what the film has to offer. Without the poignancy of the tension between the fantasy and reality here, the final moments have no real significance at all!
It’s a much better and more compelling (and less explicit and preachy) version of the dilemma presented at the end of The Life of Pi.
Nice encapsulation of what I meant about the approach being taken too far. 
The only texts that don’t have intrinsic meaning are those written by people who think texts don’t have intrinsic meaning. The rest of us - reader, author and critic -bumble along assuming that sometimes a hat is just a hat. Primitive, I know.
In the specific case I’m referring to, I’d concede Heinlein’s right to be authoritative about his own work (and would do so for most authors) were it not that his comments are wholly contrary to fact.
(From my increasingly unreliable memory…)
In one of his books, Asimov recounts being at a sci-fi convention, and hearing a speaker propounding his opinion about the meaning of one of Asimov’s stories. From the back of the room, Asimov said, "I don’t think that’s what it means.
The speaker, apparently not recognizing Asimov, said, “What makes you think you know what this story means?”
Asimov replied, “Well, I wrote it.”
To which the speaker said, “I still say, what makes you think you know what it means?”
The conversations about Asimov and Pan’s Labyrinth reminds me of Jonathan Blow, the creator of the game Braid, speaking in the film Indie Game: The Movie (a documentary about some indie game developers). He’s clearly quite upset that, in his view, people don’t “get” Braid. It’s a great game and received universal acclaim, but the way he sees it, everyone is appreciating it for the wrong (or perhaps just not the best) reasons.
Whoosh. The story was about cats and dogs, so “Lemur Maddox” is a joke.
Wait, the “person from Porlock” isn’t a way of denying he couldn’t deal with writer’s block?
YES.I don’t know if Julian ever came home with that drawing, but if someone with the intelligence of John Lennon wrote a song with those initials about the trip is subjective ever heard of, he did it on purpose. It certainly didn’t escape him afterward.
“Trippiest.”
I just read the entire page at your link.
I was hitherto unfamiliar with Francis Heaney, but dammit, that’s amazing work.
Thank you, Flywheel!
I haven’t have time yet to read the entire thing, but I’m going to echo that.
One point: sometimes a great story or a great song or ANY great work of art can inspire thoughts or feelings or memories in the beholder that the creator didn’t have in mind.
If a particular character or subplot in a novel touches you deeply, well, does it really matter if the author himself thought that character was unimportant or if he’d barely given that subplot any thought at all?
If a composer writes a piece of music so beautiful that it makes you happy to be alive, does it really matter if he himself was depressed and miserable and trying to convey despair?
SOMETIMES people stupidly misinterpret the clear meaning of a work of art (as when people think of Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” as a patriotic song). But more often, people find interesting implications and subtexts to a work of art that the creator never intended. When that happens, there’s no need to say “The author is wrong” when he denies intending any such thing.
Personally I get downright mad when people attribute a work of art to drugs without evidence. I once snapped at someone who claimed righteously that Alice in wonderland was written under the influence of LSD. First of all, Alice was written in 1865 and LSD wasn’t even synthesized until 1938, you cretin! Secondly, it seems like people can’t possibly conceive of real creativity in themselves without drugs, so it seems to them that other people can’t, either. Was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds influenced at least partially by drugs? Quite possibly, most likely. But I can also believe it came from a little kids’ drawing. People are amazingly creative.
Another part of the differentiation is that while “art” is inherently subject to interpretation by each viewer (and sometimes in each “viewing” - which includes hearing and reading), and especially open to differing interpretations across time… not all writing is “art.” Not all of even “artistic” writings is necessarily even art - if half an essay describes the physical characteristics of the Brooklyn Bridge while the second half is meditations on jumping off of it, I don’t think there’s much room for interpretation of the factual passages.
I have a book about musical imponderables where Bryan Adams claims that the song “Summer of '69” was about the sex act, ie sixty-nining.
However, I’ve also read that the record company people say that Adams was originally going to call the song “Summer of '74” (or some time in the 70’s at least), but they convinced Adams to go with the more euphonious “Summer of '69” instead.
It seems to me that Bryan Adams was having a joke at the author’s expense.
From the book:
The structure of your post suggests that it is intended as a rebuttal of Chronos’s assertion. I hope you’ll forgive my obtuseness, but I can’t find anything in the passage that serves that purpose. A little help, please?
“Non-combatant auxiliary service” could very well include things like the Post Office.
Not *quite *true. Heinlein claimed that 95% of volunteers were what we could call “civil service” - which is demonstrably untrue, not even close to what the text of the book says and repeatedly confirms.
However, not every uniformed service was combat- or cadre-related; there were auxiliary, support battalions. But they were all military - no evidence at all of any equivalent of “civil service” except crossover things like R&D and quartermaster.
The definitive case can be found here.
Except that nearly everything mentioned as possible “civil service” jobs within the Service is excluded by one passage or another. There is no evidence of any non-military job within FS, and plenty of firm statements that FS is all military.