GRGR(15) - Correct Reading (was: a thread too long)

[Gary Thompson]

This is perhaps my third end-of-year w/ e-mail and listservs and such, but
(being an academic) I've noticed how much of an increase there is in the volume
and quality of posts to the P-list. Is this a general phenomenon? My delusions?
The reading recently has been wonderful, but with end-of-semester stuff to do
there's no way to pitch into it . . . or perhaps that's the point, perhaps
people have more incentive to evade that work, and then there's buying gifts,
writing Christmas cards, staying indoors because of the cold.

Does anyone have the same perceptions I do about the P-list recently? Great
topics, new articulate people, 50-odd and not-so-odd posts per day, and this
after a period of time when the discussion was really flagging and I was
wondering whether or not to delete 'em all . . .

Welcome, Josh. This may not sit well with Doug's reminders about the Real World,
but there are those who see the shoe on the other foot--rather than using texts
to justify one's pet theory about literature or culture or anything else, it may
be that we are possessed by theories, or rather we are who we are as the result
of being raised and ejucated and conditioned into certain ways of configuring
that real world. It's only when we are reminded of this process by coming into
conflict with another, conflicting way of configuring--because of another
person, because of another text, because of figures we thought we knew such as
the Mad Scientist or the Nazi Rocketjockey--that we have a chance to see those
strings. And then the first impulse and easiest explanation is to blame the
others' conditioning.

I don't want to come off as relativist here. My gut reaction is to see
pedophilia and genocide and the other things as so totally evil that I want to
repress their existence (in the past, in the present). _GR_ puts these things
back before us in ways that invite us to re-examine what we count for good and
evil and how ordinary, routine justifications can lead us into them (e.g., the
passage where Pointsman expresses his Duty to investigate what's going on at the
cortex of Leftenant Slothrop). I think that's one of the features of Daniel
Goldhagen's book, that it constructs a way by which I can imagine ordinary
Germans' beliefs tying into their leaders' articulations of the real world. And
P's books, in addition to being entertaining and powerful poems or verbal
artifacts, are also goads to me to look at our own beliefs. We did, after all,
elect Nixon and Reagan and Clinton and the rest.

The odds do always favor the House.

Gary Thompson


Josh Kortbein wrote:

> "David Morris" writes:
> >Terrance again makes legitimate points, but my way of reading aligns w/
> >jody's here.  . . .
>
> I don't think having or not having literature education is the point.
>
> I remarked to a friend recently, who's taking a lit crit survey class,
> that often the point of much critical analysis seems not to be "here's
> a (new, different, whatever) way to read this text," but "here's yet
> another way that this theory is validated by a text." If critical
> theories are to be used it seems best that they're used in immanent
> critiques, where the text remains the focus, rather than the theory. . . .
>

P. S. A list suggestion: could people cut the parts that aren't relevant to
their posts before replying? Saves bandwidth and storage, and it may matter a
great deal to people like John Krafft (if he's still here).

G.