How do we read Jack and Jill?

[Mark Kohut]

> Alice writes right on, imho: 
> But there is a limit to the readings and this number is not
> equal to
> the number of people who read a text. Some readings are
> weak and not
> worth much. Others are strong, so strong that they are only
> valuable
> as misreadings.
> 
> I dislike all of the supposed 'named' kinds of readers/critical approaches. Their abstraction as named kinds are all subsumed under the general truth above. 

Readings square, explain, illumine, get right, point out the beauty of,  from whatever way they come at a text or they do not.......

BUT, I'll confess to New Criticism leanings (and learnings).....the art is
in the text...........or it is not Art.............

Ideas themselves are not art (in texts by writers) BUT, as you gave us in that James Art of Fiction precis', first we must understand the work aright.....

THEN we judge it..........

Although, of course, with some artists,--like Pynchon-- the distinction isn't so clear. That is: Sometimes, reading him, to GET one of his extended conceits, the original event/scene/situation that it might be satirizing so uniquely, is to judge it successful. 

My two cents. 

Many readings illume ABOUT the text so to speak. The difference is real.