Tossing horses at the wall to see what pricks

[Terrance]

Shitty Writing & Reading And Talking Shit

  To limit what readers evoke while reading **that** paragraph to the
production of the work or what really amounts to speculation about the
production of the work,  with the critical responses a purely subsequent
activity, oversimplifies both reading and writing. A concurrent stream
of feelings, attitudes, and ideas is aroused by the work being summoned
up under guidance of the text. This dual stream of responses may not
always be apprehended as separate. The reaction to the emerging work may
be felt merely as a general state of mind, an ambiance of acceptance,
approval,  incredulity. Such responses may be momentary, peripheral,
almost woven into the texture of what is felt to be the work itself.  Or
the reactions may at times take on forms that are more conscious. The
range of potential responses and the gamut of degrees of intensity and
articulateness are infinitely vast, since they depend not only on the
character of the text but even more on the special character of the
individual reader. 
The speculations of MalignD and Doug M. remind us that it is not the
reader's part to recapture the author's original emotions and state of
mind. It's not possible. Moreover, doing so equates the author's final
text with its germinal impulse, and disregards the groping, developing,
trial-and-error revision characteristic of much creative activity, in
the course of which the initial motivation may be changed or
transformed. A poet may sit to write a poem about a dead classmate and
end up writing a poem like Lycidas.  Also, the nature of the language in
which an author is writing, and the literary and cultural conventions he
is either following or modifying, play an important role. Pynchon has
written a Foreword to a Novel. But beyond these simple conventions, the
very emotions and thoughts ultimately expressed through the text may
have undergone a development or even a transformation. The text presents
a whole network of ideas or even systems of ideas and values that apply
to the world evoked by the reader. Current readers and writers simply
can not know what future readers and writers will make of a text. So
the  argument that Pynchon has or has not written a Foreword for future
High School students who may or may not share basic assumptions about
our world doesn't really make a lot of sense. Moreover, the text
presents us with a whole network of assumptions about our world. Some of
these are embodied explicitly or implicitly in its persona and its
situations. When P talks about Sloth he creates a persona and a
situation-a writer in prison-and he does the same here in the Foreword. 
Those of **US**. The situation is our situation, post 9-11.  That being
said, a readers will draw on their own internalized culture in order to
elicit from the text a world that may differ from their own in many
respects. Imagine teaching __1984__  in post Gulf War II Iraq and
reading this Foreword with students there. What has been attempted here,
after the horse has been beaten into a tire and a few dozen jars of
Elmer's glue, is a sticking of language to a denotative wall and a
stripping of the creative processes of reading and writing. The result
is pretty shitty if you ask me.