TR On beliefs in fiction

[Mark Kohut]

Perhaps this sez it better'n I tried.....I did not mean to suggest an author's "thoughts" are fully determinable. Some, such as how
a metaphor reveals a 'thought' behind that metaphor, that the metaphor contains might be seeable. 
 
Thoughts of characters are tricky. One favorite example of mine is "First thing we do is, we kill all the lawyers" ---Shakespeare---
is, of course, said by someone, a rebel leader attacking a King and his men...........................................
and, 400 years of trying to determine what Shakespeare himself thought of this band of rebels, of rebellion against authority
just in this one play goes on.
 
Shakespeare is the most famous writer, probably, about whom the consensus is we know squat about what he ultimately 
believed but play-by-play we get embodied attitudes and embodied ambiguities
 
 

From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: TR On beliefs in fiction


One might not be able to figure an author's thoughts from the text, but the fictional world & work are interpretable by the author's design, usually.  It's partly why we read fiction. So the values and messages in the text might not be the author's own, but they are his hard wrought product. An author producing a work that is foreign to his own sympathies is probably not going to generate greatness.  So sez I.

On Friday, July 29, 2011, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It is the authorial attitude to whatever events an author puts into his fiction, if determinable,
> that might show the author's beliefs, not just his use for fiction of 'metaphysical' events or meanings
> the characters hold.
>  
> Dostoevsky's fiction has D's answers to the questions of his God-haunted characters.
>  
> Camus's fiction has his answers.
>  
> Compared to D, Gaddis makes fun of lots of everything about his characters. Makes it hard
> to determine their relation to certain events they experience.
> 


But his design carrying his themes are what I would call his 'thoughts", embodied thoughts.
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