re P's intentions

[jbor]

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>From: "Otto Sell" <o.sell at telda.net>
>

> I don't care for Mr. Pynchon's intentions 'cause I don't want to fall into
> the 'intentional fallacy'. I look for what he has written.
snip

I didn't really want to buy into this argument except to say that as well as
the "Intentional Fallacy" of "trying to derive the standard of criticism
from the psychological causes" of a text, as disclosed by Beardsley and
Wimsatt -- "biography and relativism" in the critical interpretation of
texts -- what they were also concerned to dispel was the "Affective Fallacy"
of "trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological
effects" of the work -- "impressionism and relativism" in the critical
interpretation of text. (See Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt Jr, 'The
Intentional Fallacy' (1946), and 'The Affective Fallacy' (1949), in Wimsatt,
*The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry*, 1954, University of
Kentucky, Lexington, 1967, pp. 3-18, 21-39.) What the New Critics sought in
place of these two "fallacies" of "relativism" in their own interpretations
of text was some type of "objective criticism", the capture of some finite
truth existing within the text itself.

I don't know that *any* of these prescriptive approaches to reading is
particularly valid on its own.

But I do believe you can say that there are certain things that were *not*
intended as meanings by the author, just as you can say that there are
certain things that don't affect you as a reader, without falling into
either of the fallacies identified by Wimsatt, Beardsley et. al. There have
to be pragmatic, common sense, discretionary choices made by the reader (as
by the author) or else communication is impossible, meaning is
incommunicable. And, I think that the "Objective Fallacy" which with such
presumption and gusto those New Critics stormed the critical stage in the
40s and 50s is an even *less* viable interpretative approach than either of
the other two they were so hasty to discard. As a prescription, that is.

Of course, Pynchon says very little about any of his texts, apart from
providing some background info relating to the composition of the early
stories in the *Slow Learner* intro; and passing references to *V.* and *Lot
49*, both of which give away little more than the actual inscription of his
name on the covers of those novels. The work is left to stand or fall on its
own merit, I agree.

best