Luddite essay

[jporter]

> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 12:19:28 +1100

> ----------
>> From: jporter
> 
>> Always
>> a risk, I guess, for taking on "weighty" themes.
> 
> But better taking them on than remaining silent and
> running the risk that they will slip from notice, no?
> 

It would be easy to say yes, but even that seemingly logical assumption
about the (absent) author is an assumption. Who is it that takes these
themes on, and why, are parallel questions that in effect are raised, and
that begin to crowd the weighty themes themselves.

The need to ascribe a particular authorial intention in order to justify
one's own interpretation of the text seems nearly irresistible. (Julio
Iglesias, complete with barely animate robo-femmes forming the chorus,
here...).

I don't think I have a hang up with the authorless text. I may be completely
"incorrect" in my response to Pynchon's works, but I get one hell of a kick
out of them, and an author stands right up and speaks to me. It is uncanny
how well this author "knows" the habits of my mind, and shows me things.
What I see I try to share, but the pleasures are independent of my successes
in that regard. It is dismaying, however, to notice how the works, which I
find so enjoyable, seem to effect so much hostility among others who
apparently have more at stake in being "correct" or making sure that I know
they are "correct" w/r/t Authorial Intent.

But maybe that's just another one of those risks the author has chosen not
to avoid taking.

jody