re P's intentions

[Richard Romeo]

CW wrote:
>
>  I was reacting primarily to a notion I
>thought I grasped a glimpse of in your post, something about the
>possibility of a Necessary knowledge of the artist and his intentions
>for the sake of a True, more-correct-than-all-others, interpretation,
>not too much knowledge or too little knowledge but just the right
>amount of knowledge.
----------
I would bet that when scholars down the road get their claws on Pynchon's 
letters, there will be more than enough of folks spouting on his intentions. 
  Malcolm Lowry wrote a 35 pg letter (yes, 35 pgs) explicating Under the 
Volcano for his publisher.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see also 
some of the lit-crit trashed as a result of what's in the letters, too. I 
admit to wanting to read them.


and

>my interpretation (whatever the hell an interpretation
>is, after all) are globs more interesting than the scholars', and
>every bit as right.
-----------
being of sound mind and body, I couldn't say it better. Scholastic inquiry 
is a job, after all, and in the end, much of it has all the staying power of 
a head full of snow (apologies to J/R).

I should add Tony Tanner to my list of b/4.
Rich

>
>
>
>--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com> wrote:
> > Couldn't agree more when "MichaelB" says that knowing about the
> > artist and the artist's intentions gives "pleasure to the process
> > of
> > interpretation, as hobbies do." I'm certainly not into this Pynchon
> >
> > reading thing for the money; maybe some of the people who do make a
> >
> > for-profit career of it -- or who would like to do --  are the ones
> >
> > who get so uptight about foreclosing the amateur's pleasures, or
> > maybe they're just ill-mannered cranks. It's also true that more
> > than
> > one esteemed literary critic has devoted considerable time and
> > effort to understanding a favored artist's life and work, I recall
> > as
> > I look at the copy of Jean-Yves Tadie's biography, _Marcel Proust_
> > on
> > my bookshelf (I just saw a copy of the English translation in Black
> >
> > Oak Books over in Berkeley yesterday) next to his masterful Pleiade
> >
> > edition of _A la recherche du temps perdu_, and manage to work a
> > knowledge of the artist into ther appreciation of the work.  If you
> >
> > want to put the artist and the art in "different worlds, different
> > galaxies, different universes" -- a proposition that seems absurd
> > to
> > me, unless you have some kind of special definition for "world,"
> > "galaxy," and "universe" -- go for it, but that doesn't mean that
> > other readers have to follow your lead.
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
><http://www.online-journalist.com>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
>http://mail.yahoo.com/

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com