Today's debate question

[Perry Noid]

Well I'm not sure I know how to debate this. But I've noticed some
resonances with the beginning of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño; the motivations
of the four readers of the same author.

On Tuesday, December 22, 2015, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sort of reminds me of computer assisted text analysis.
>
> Apropos of nothing but * had to post it.*
>
> *I think the "autistic analyst" is a good figure of speech.*
>
> *The computer's the idiot savant.*
>
> *Without the empathizing reader, it's a pretty bleak proposition all
> around.*
>
> *I'm not saying don't do it, but it's way secondary.*
>
> *Dispassionate analysis, I'm talking about.*
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 11:27 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mark.kohut at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Yeahp, nice response. I called it a debate question for this reason.
>> Let me try to frame 'the other perspective".
>>
>> Literature, including drama and (most) poetry is about Life, "life and
>> life only--Dylan" in ways most disciplines are not. The distancing of
>> Logic; science, even the objectivity of the scientific method are not
>> necessary to it. Our common--and uncommon humanity IS. That humanity
>> remains abstract and distant unless we can feel it just as our own
>> emotions---some say our own thoughts even (!)--are reguired to
>> understand our human feelings, our humanity.
>> Without being able to identify with the words, scenes and characters
>> in any work of literature we are as good as autistic. Perhaps a savant
>> but ultimately clueless to what matters in Literature.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','bekker2 at icloud.com');>> wrote:
>> > I see what you’re saying Mark but I still have to disagree with the
>> broadness of your statement.    Whether or not a reader’s identification
>> with the characters is a good thing or not depends on what she/he’s
>> reading - furthermore,  reading on one level does not eliminate other
>> levels.  -  Also,  what does “identify” mean in this case?  As far as I can
>> think,  identification is a range with “knowing someone like that” on one
>> end  ->   “caring about”  a character being in the middle range -  and
>> becoming "psychologically enmeshed with a character” on the rather intense
>> end.
>> >
>> > This is good about the more intense identification:
>> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/can_you_identify/
>> > Includes books like On the Road (Kerouac) and The Sorrows of Young
>> Werther (von Goethe) goes on to contemporary homosexual and racial stuff.
>> > **
>> > Also from today in Nebraska re Snoopy the comic strip - the lighter
>> "knowing someone like that” -:
>> >
>> http://www.kearneyhub.com/opinions/hubcolumns/lori_potter/we-identify-with-characters-in-peanuts/article_6b6891c0-9a9e-11e5-a9e8-a79105d8c36f.html
>> >
>> > Charles Schulz and his “Peanuts” comic strip kids had been fixtures in
>> daily newspapers since 1952, but their popularity soared after people saw
>> “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
>> >
>> > I was age 9 in 1965, so my friends and I were pretty much like Charlie
>> Brown and his friends. Or at least we knew other kids who seemed like them.
>> >
>> > Some identified with the inept Charlie Brown, who couldn’t fly a kite,
>> kick a football or win a baseball game. Others may have thought our
>> teachers and other adults sounded like “wah-wah-wah.”
>> >
>> > We knew bossy girls like Lucy. For any Wilcox classmates who thought I
>> was one of them, let me set the record straight. I’ve always been
>> judgmental, not bossy.
>> >
>> > I was a Peppermint Patty tomboy who played sports with the boys at
>> recess decades before most Americans thought it was OK for girls to do “boy
>> things” and vice versa.
>> >
>> > I salute the boys who let me play and risked the shame of losing to a
>> girl.
>> >
>> > We loved Linus’ innocence and understood why it was so hard for him to
>> give up his security blanket. We admired the talents of Schroeder, the
>> piano prodigy, and thought it would be cool to have a happy-go-lucky,
>> dream-big, drama-loving dog like Snoopy.
>> >
>> > ****
>> > ME >  I personally identified with Charlie Brown and that’s kind of
>> cool because he’s a boy. (I’ve identified with other males though so it’s
>> not that big a deal.) Know any males like Lucy?  That’s called “Men Explain
>> Things to Me.”  - lol -  My big identification thing was Jo in Little Women
>> and Nancy Drew -  (good role model stuff there, imo.)
>> >
>> > We identify because we know folks like that - and it works well for
>> adult readers in satire and tear-jerkers and anti-war movies and so on.
>> Some folks identify to the extent of losing themselves in the emotions of
>> the character (escape romances?)  ->   After many years of reading many
>> books in many groups with many people,  I think some women tend to enjoy
>> identifying with characters more than other folks (both sexes) do.  And
>> those women who do place importance on the identification factor enjoy
>> reading books that are aimed at that.   Do men identify with the guys in
>> war novels?  (I have no idea.)  These books aren’t that great imo but they
>> sell well.
>> >
>> > In Pynchon’s books I’ve identified with some of the women characters -
>> a couple in AtD,  CoL49 a little bit,
>> > Bek
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Dec 22, 2015, at 1:57 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mark.kohut at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Proposition: That reading by identification with a character condemns
>> the reading to be second-rate most of the time. The major reason: it
>> reduces the sensibility of the writer, whose sensibility is supposed to be
>> richer than ours ( most of the time) but which at least is Other than
>> ours....
>> >>
>> >> To ours. The vaunted empathy is crippled; the genius of observation
>> and imagination is lost. The reading is ultimately solipsistic.
>> >>
>> >> Sent from my iPad-
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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