Sammiches, et cetera . . . .

[Stefan Schuber]

On 18.10.95, Seany wrote:

> There is something to be said for hard work. And
>although reading GR is a difficult task, the rewards are plentiful and
>worthwhile. Perhaps there is 'good' _reading_ as there is 'bad' _reading_
...
>So what is art? A difficult question as well as controversial (suprise,
>suprise). As for reading GR and books of it's caliber, the reader must put in
>more to get more out of the novel. The reader becomes involved and the book is
>raised to a higher level of interactability (is this a word?).
>
>What does everybody else think?
>
I'm really enjoying these trains of thought about modernism, postmodernism,
reading, and high-n-low art. I'd suggest that some of the posts seem to
endorse a reader-response scenario according to which readers engage in
some sort of exchange with TP's texts and come away with recuperated
meaning(s), some of which are "accurate," some of which are less
empirically sustainable (wch then leads one to wonder if TP is "in error,"
if he's taking liberties, or if he's invoking artistic license).

Be all this as it may, I think Seany brings up a couple of important
points: Reading is work that one does with a "text," and the most
interesting "texts" are those that afford us the opportunity to do the most
work, especially if we are interactive/interoperative with the "text."

This suggests that some of us are perhaps better "readers" or have an
enlarged or more rewarding workout with "texts," wch in turn makes us
somewhat elitists, wch is also to say that we thereby claim privelige or
priveliged status as readers. This does not play well in a (soi-disant)
egalitarian society. It also makes me at least wonder about who or what the
nominal hero (e.g., of GR) is while I'm so busily deconstructing.

I'm tossing out ideas here and certainly welcome insights of "readers." I
think Seany has at least a psychological insight in saying that "when we
>put in a large amount of work in effort to understand something, we tend to
>become a little more protective of our status on that something, whatever it
>is. I think it's safe to say that as a group we expect more out of the novels
>we read as well as we expect more out of ourselves as readers."

... & because we're such good "readers," perhaps we make a more interesting
novel of GR?

Well, deconstructioners?