Golden Fang

[alice wellintown]

Don Antenen wrote:
> The idea I'm toying with right now, a week out from my first read of IV, is that the Golden Fang is mostly a distraction from what the LAPD is up to.  > > Reading the book through the lens of 'the Golden Fang doesn't really matter' is sort of interesting, anyway.  That's the fun part of fiction; you can read and reread it so many different ways and make it all 'true'.  Unless you read it the wrong way, of course...

Yeah, the GF is another one of P's anti-conceits.

The text is not a Rorschach. Not merely black spots on a page. There
are limits to the many different ways it may be read and made "true".
That is, if we apply a reasonable critical criteria. As MalignD notes,
the P-List has proven itself resistant to any reasonable criteria for
the critical assessment of P-Works.

Fanboys Rule.



Wrong way readings fly.

Stencilized readings are part of the game and, if one is so determined
to teach Benny something at the end of the day, one is free to Google
On,  Google On, Google On. I guess IV may be more interesting as a
work of conspiracy than as a work of art. Although, there are far
better books on conspiracy and the CIA than this Romance. Right? And,
anyway, one should not expect, nor even make a serious attempt to
resolve the conspiracy and its contradictions, since the work mocks
the conspiracy theorist (a common trope in P's works since V.) and
subjects them to the harshest satire, and because the conspiracy
theorists attempts to put together a moral theme or satire will always
devolve into oblique and equivocal readings that undermine the
political readings they advance.

Of course, to write Romance in prose, as Longfellow notes in his
Review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, an author must be a poet.
Adding Poe's Review to those "Thrice" Told Tales, we might argue that,
while poetry is not necessarily the form that affords the greatest
exercise of the imaginative faculty in a genius author, it is clearly
the case that any work of Romance in prose worthy of close study must
reward the reader with poetic language and sensibilities.

To my reading, IV is P's weakest and most disappointing work to date.
Although all three of the California Romances are weaker than the
large Anatomy Romances (V., GR, M&D, AtD), this one is ugly.