ruined by interpretation

[curlyqlink]

No, I can honestly say I have never had a book ruined for me by thinking about it too much.

Some books don't much stand up to being thought about... but those are generally books I haven't much enjoyed reading in the first place.

As for analysis, some analysis I find irksome because I don't agree with it.

Some analysis (like some anything else) can be wrong-headed; this is no more a reason to condemn analysis than the fact that some science has turned out to be wrong is a reason to abandon science.

[prendrelemick]

In the field of literature, there are many analyses that need interpretation.

[kelby_lake]

In the field of literature, there are many analyses that need interpretation.

Interpreting the interpretations is quite interesting

[Jozanny]

Oh come on. Hermeneutics is not exactly a science, though you might never guess from New Critics, as practiced in the late 20th century through today. I'd rather an extended and insightful discussion than opinions trussed up in stock phrases. As nice as it is that a large group of readers can get together in a community like this one, a quick perusal of the May discussion of The Maltese Falcon shows that a high percentage of the participants didn't post much in the way of an analysis, good, bad, insightful, or otherwise.

Now, Hammett isn't Borges, but I can imagine that Borges owes much to Hammett's trump cards, and there is something worth gleaning even from commercially driven genres, especially when they become classics, but the fastest way to kill cultural appreciation is to express things like this:

It sucks.
I like it.
Didn't do much for me.

That right there contributes to the devolution of the human animal, rather than improves upon the quality of insight and ability.

Now, I agree, things can get nonsensical. Jed Perl despises the artist Francis Bacon, and says Bacon isn't a painter even though Bacon obviously offers canvas and representational modes which offer the viewer a certain degree of brutalism. Me? Despite Goya, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Abstract expressionism, Impressionism, Picasso, Warhol, these traditions have long chucked pictorial accuracy, so far be it for me to know to a certainty that Bacon is an empty shell, and would cause luke to recoil in horror--but this points to the problem of the art world being three or four times removed from a non-afficionado like myself. I *know* a little here and there, had some art history, but I don't have the deceased Updike's Harvard erudition to be able to practice as an art critic, and few people outside of practitioners like luke can function in that role, but most of us should be able to assess narrative and other arts beyond

I like it or I hate it

and I am sure I could do that looking at Bacon even in near ignorance as to why he is Barry Manilow rather than a real recording artist, like Frank Sinatra, which is another way of saying I disagree with Perl even though I lack his expertise. One cannot say Barry isn't a musician and a singer, even if one can point to what makes him a terribly bad one.

[stlukesguild]

Jed Perl... I can't think of a more conservative idiot as critic since the New Republic's own Hilton Kramer. An iconic figure like Francis Bacon dismissed as the worst painter of the 20th century and another, Robert Rauschenberg brushed away with a wave of the hand: "As for his art, it stank in the 1950s, and it doesn't look any better today." I'll only give him a slight benefit of the doubt because he was quite strong in his responses to the recent exhibition of my own beloved, Pierre Bonnard. Still... I do get where you are coming from in that certain criticisms are indeed less than satisfactory. To state "I like it" or "I hate it" may be fine if backed up with some logical reasons as to why. All criticism comes down to personal opinion at a certain level, albeit some opinions are better than others. "Statements like "It sucks" or "The greatest writer since Shakespeare" or "The worst painter of the 20thy century" are so meaningless that they beg no response other than a bemused smirk.

Jozy... you again paint me as far too much of the conservative in artistic matters. Perhaps to a certain extent I am a classicist... certainly I am deeply rooted in the history of art... but as such I am more than aware that in the vast majority of instances it is those who are so deeply rooted that are the greatest innovators (whether we speak of Michelangelo, Rubens, Ingres, Picasso, Matisse, or Anselm Kiefer) and not the oblivious iconoclasts. Picasso, for example, could question and challenge the very foundations of Western painting so well because he knew it like the back of his hand. Pollack, on the other hand, built off his immediate predecessors and peers and eventually arrived at something new, but seen within the larger context of art history he is quite limited in his range, his output of truly great paintings in quite small, and his importance is rather diminutive in comparison with an artist such as Paul Klee... let alone Picasso.

Personally (surprise, surprise, Jozie) I find Francis Bacon to be an incredibly powerful painter. Perl argues that Bacon embraces all the wrong directions and elements in art. Nothing could be more ridiculous. The very notion of a monolithic development of art is dead... and always was wrong. Yes, Schoenberg, and Weber, and Berg were far more experimental than Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Delius... but somehow I suspect that the latter composers may just outlast the former. Innovation and fracturing the art of one's predecessors isn't the sole measure of artistic merit.

A good many of my artist friends share a similar feeling that the status of Abstract Expressionism was far overstated (thanks especially to the hyperbolic criticism of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg)... or rather that it was overstated to the exclusion of artists who did not follow in the same mold. We have come to expect that a number of European masters including Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Lucian Freud, and Giorgio Morandi way prove in the long run to have been just as important... if not more-so. Indeed, considering the strong Post-Modern predilection for a pre-Modernist "realism" in painting, one needs to look quite hard for heirs of Abstract Expressionism and a great deal of Modernist Expressionism and Abstraction as a whole.

Perhaps the major problem faced by each of these artists (outside of the fact that they were not working in New York) is that they did not follow in the footsteps of the New York School and they largely had little of no interest in what the New York School was doing or what the dictates of the all-powerful Clement Greenberg were. When Greenberg said (to paraphrase) "painting is about flattening the picture plane, eliminating the subject and the artist's hand" later filed painters such as Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Helen Frankenthaler (who just happened to be sleeping with Robert Motherwell... and then Greenberg) said "Yes sir! Mr. Greenberg, sir!" Robert Rauschenberg rebelled and said "screw you, Greenberg!" and then churned out one of his in your face combines that broke every rule of Greenberg. Francis Bacon, however, I have always imagined, would have simply said "Clem who? Is he gay?"

The reality is that Francis Bacon is a limited artist. He lacks the range of Picasso or Matisse. In his way his work exists in just as narrow a range as that of most of Abstract Expressionism. On the other hand, his work is clearly rooted in the work of his predecessors... but those he looks to and that which he built upon were not the same as that of the mainstream Ab-Ex. He built upon Picasso's Surrealist period distortions of the figure, a certain Japanese minimalism of compositional design (Bacon began as a designer), Matisse's color sense, the manipulation of paint and tonalism of Soutine, Van Gogh and Baroque masters such as Rembrandt and especially Velasquez, and perhaps more than anything... photography and film. Where earlier artists such Degas, Bonnard, etc... may have gained something from the compositional ideas of photography, Bacon may have been one of the first to recognize that there were images in film and photography that were as iconic and essential to 20th century culture as that of any painting: the scene on the steps from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Hitler ranting an Nuremberg, Muybridge's studies of human movement, etc... Bacon drew from such disparate sources... images of the realities and horrors of 20th century life (both personal and public) and then he staged these within the highly aestheticized context of the religious icon and altarpiece. The resulting works are among some of the most resonant paintings of the latter 20th century:

[higley]

Fantasy, horror and science fiction all existed long before television. Pop culture refers to whatever is currently popular, so in older times classics like Dickens and Shakespeare would have been considered the pop culture of their era. So there's nothing wrong with the aforementioned genres or anything ironic about him writing those genres.

Exactly. I've never really considered Bradbury to be "just" a sci fi writer, but say rather that he writes about the human condition in the hypothetical context of a futuristic time, I really think he can't be pinned down to fantasy for its own sake--although as cynara says, those predated television anyway.

[Jozanny]

But luke, what I am saying is I don't even know how to find the assurance to agree or disagree. There was some interesting pushback against Perl, and without knowing much, I do think he took it over the top. I see Carivaggio as a very powerful artist, after all, even if Perl singles him out as an archetype to be blamed. It is the experience transmuted which creates great work.

I'd like to see a Bacon exhibit one day. Perl raises his voice so much that I think I might try to judge for myself.

[MorpheusSandman]

Stanley Kubrick once said something about film that I've always found applicable to all the arts: "film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."

For me, it's essential to enjoy a work passionately first, and not attempt to grasp it all intellectually. Allowing it to provoke reactionary emotions and your own intuition of knowing there's more there but not being able to completely discern it. In this sense, one can look at art as like a relationship; the early part is all hot and passionate romance. The analysis and interpretation is where one turns the intangible to the tangible, the intuitively sensed to the consciously grasped. If a work still holds up to this and maintains its greatness then it's probably a truly great work of art. This would be like marriage and knowing someone for many years after the passion is worn off; if it lasts, it's probably real.

There are a couple of works I've spent years studying in depth (two would be 2001: A Space Odyssey and Neon Genesis Evangelion). In both cases I began by passionately loving them and, in the case of NGE, being profoundly effected by my first viewing. But all of the analysis, discussion, and "solving" of the mysteries gave me a greater appreciation for just how impressive both were. My blind passion turned into a kind of deeper, '20/20' appreciation for what the works accomplished and WHY I was so effected.

I do recall a quote from a professor of Shakespeare who said that he'd give back all of his knowledge of Romeo & Juliet if he could go back and experience for the first time. In a way, I understand the sentiment. There's nothing that can replace that sense of passion one gets from encountering a truly great and personally affecting work or artist for the first time. I just look at all the other stuff as a logical next step. Because passion must eventually wear off; and that's where we find out if something has lasting value.

[stlukesguild]

Jozie... There's a wonderful diptych in the Philadelphia museum by Rogier Van der Weyden that has always reminded me of Bacon:



The reddish area is far more orangish... a cadmium red light hue... from what I remember... so that it fairly well screams. Like Bacon the painting merges the horror (of the act of a crucifixion) and dramatic realism with an extreme artifice: not only is the drama taking place within a shallow space that suggests a stage set... something out of Beckett's Endgame... but there is an absolute artfulness in the placement... the flow of the draperies and movement of the bodies are artfully thought out. The end result is rather like the horrible scenes of the Inferno as they unfold in the controlled structure's of Dante's terza rima or Baudelaire's nightmarish scenes presently within perfectly realized sonnets. There is this frisson that results from the contrast between the content and form that Bacon also achieves in his strongest works. Perl's criticism of Bacon's lack of structure immediately leads me to think that he hasn't the least concept of formal structure in art. Painters, unfortunately, have long been at the mercy of critics... who as writers are masters of words... but not necessarily visual form. I had to laugh upon reading this review with an artist friend and admit that perl was good at what he did. His quoting Lisa Yuskavage, George Condo, and John Currin... three of the worst contemporary schlock artists... perfectly undermined Bacon, who is nothing like these latter painters. I have little doubt that much of the negative direction taken in the visual arts is owed to criticism that focuses more upon elements that can be readily explored in words: subject matter, narrative, socio-political ramifications, philosophical underpinnings... as opposed to color, touch, rhythm, harmony, and other essentially visual elements.

[Jozanny]

I may have seen this luke, though it has been awhile since I've been to old stodgy--but to my point--overkill helps. I have neither Perl's expertise, nor yours, but I have learned, and when it comes to art, I do not mind proclaiming some stupidity.

I think, however, that we'll always be negotiating a balance between critical scholarship and lay accessibility.

If I can turn the tables on the OP's plaint, the closest problem I have to ruin by interpretation is when theater directors attempt absolute fidelity to Shakespeare. (Not a big fan of Originalism here, hint hint.)

I feel that for Shakespeare to thrive, adaptation, variation, and textual study and criticism is essential--although I have to handicap that with the caveat that, I have never seen some of the plays which interest me most in terms of producing them, Measure for Measure, among others.

[kelby_lake]

Stanley Kubrick once said something about film that I've always found applicable to all the arts: "film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."

For me, it's essential to enjoy a work passionately first, and not attempt to grasp it all intellectually. Allowing it to provoke reactionary emotions and your own intuition of knowing there's more there but not being able to completely discern it. In this sense, one can look at art as like a relationship; the early part is all hot and passionate romance. The analysis and interpretation is where one turns the intangible to the tangible, the intuitively sensed to the consciously grasped. If a work still holds up to this and maintains its greatness then it's probably a truly great work of art. This would be like marriage and knowing someone for many years after the passion is worn off; if it lasts, it's probably real.

There are a couple of works I've spent years studying in depth (two would be 2001: A Space Odyssey and Neon Genesis Evangelion). In both cases I began by passionately loving them and, in the case of NGE, being profoundly effected by my first viewing. But all of the analysis, discussion, and "solving" of the mysteries gave me a greater appreciation for just how impressive both were. My blind passion turned into a kind of deeper, '20/20' appreciation for what the works accomplished and WHY I was so effected.

I do recall a quote from a professor of Shakespeare who said that he'd give back all of his knowledge of Romeo & Juliet if he could go back and experience for the first time. In a way, I understand the sentiment. There's nothing that can replace that sense of passion one gets from encountering a truly great and personally affecting work or artist for the first time. I just look at all the other stuff as a logical next step. Because passion must eventually wear off; and that's where we find out if something has lasting value.

Agree, agree!

The mood one I only really started to notice when we did a drama performance and we had a long piece of music playing in the background- the rhythm of the music and the rhythm of the piece clashed.

[Big Al]

This is an interesting topic for me because I recently re-read a favorite of mine, Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and I worked my way through (most of) the critical essays contained the the volume I purchased (the Norton Critical Edition). I found some of the interpretations fascinating, for instance one essay which discussed the influence of Jewish myths and folktales on "The Metamorphosis," and how it could be viewed as a modernized exploration of the themes of traditional Yiddish writings. The prose was clear, lucid, well-supported with excerpts from several Jewish literary works, and the central thesis was solid and perfectly comprehensible. However, many of the other essays (actually, all the others in varying degrees) put forth confusing, abstract theories about the story and did so in scattered, verbose writing which gave the impression that the minds of the authors were constantly wandering as they tried to scrape together some kind of definite thesis.

In other words, I would assert that the right kind of interpretations and criticisms can be an immense benefit both to one's understanding and appreciation of the text in question, but the wrong ones can be frustrating excercies in futility which make you simply want to throw the book out the window and let it drop where it may (although my experiences with "bad" literary criticism have never diminished my love of a narrative, but merely the author of the criticism, if indeed I had any respect for him or her in the first place).

[mono]

I won't go so far as to suggest there are no "wrong" interpretations, however.

Well maybe not "no" wrong interpretations, but as long as a fair interpretation is derived from the text itself, strictly speaking, there can be relatively few "wrong" readings.

I definitely would suggest that entirely wrong interpretations exist - ones waaaaay 'left field,' so to speak. Neely said it well that as long as they seem 'fair' interpretations, then it makes a reader's interpretation a bit more accurate, but I have still read some well-educated, well-written interpretations that . . . well, just sucked, though I know I do not always seem correct myself.
What makes an interpretation objectively (ugh, I hate using that word) correct or incorrect relies upon the author(s) herself/himself/themselves. Unfortunately, an author distributing a work to the masses, people s/he will never encounter nor have the ability to explain her/himself, bears the risk of subjecting the literary work to wrong interpretation; if the author has already died, sometimes enough commentary, interviews, documentation, and such exist for some readers to refer to for a more educated interpretation - disasters and sins to the literary arts, however, still exist. Interpreting takes practice, nonetheless, and no flawless expert exists, likely not even scholars who study Finnegans Wake for longer than Joyce took to write the book (some 17 years, if I remember correctly), and I can picture the man emitting a loud Irish guffaw in his grave every time someone opens the front cover of the 'novel.'
For those deceased authors, their posthumous works, works written anonymously, or works written by practically invisible authors (ahem, Salinger), they placed their slabs of paper at the risk of wrong interpretations the moment the first print whisked off the warm presses, including to literature instructors, educated scholars, and first-time readers. Some books receive more victimization than others, which can make them quite a bit more widely read, even if they get publicly banned, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lady Chatterly's Lover, The Bible (and most religious texts, for that matter), and most everything by writers mentioned in my previous post; only Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, and individuals allegedly 'inspired' can objectively critique interpretations to call them 'right,' 'wrong,' or 'on the right/wrong track.' In this case, I agree with JBI's estimated overlapping percentages, despite how extreme they sound:

I'd say 80% of academic readings are meh, 40% bad, and 95% of unscholarly readings are pretty mediocre, in terms of accuracy.

Regardless of what interpretations prove correct or incorrect, even worse, sometimes the incorrect interpretations can take hold and control the fate of that book. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, and most of his other novels, regardless, got banned in most countries; in its time, it only received publication in Italy, yet got distributed everywhere. Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains banned in the majority of public schools, at least in the U.S., due to its 'racial slurs,' though Twain, a 19th-century American, advocated strongly for the abolition of slavery in his day. These books not only get ruined by interpretation, but quite literally banned from further interpretation.

I recently re-read a favorite of mine, Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and I worked my way through (most of) the critical essays contained the the volume I purchased (the Norton Critical Edition). I found some of the interpretations fascinating, for instance one essay which discussed the influence of Jewish myths and folktales on "The Metamorphosis," and how it could be viewed as a modernized exploration of the themes of traditional Yiddish writings.

Interesting, Big Al - I will have to do a bit of searching for that. It sounds a bit extreme, but fascinating, nonetheless.

[Lokasenna]

Wrong political subtext? How is that possible? An author writes always in th right context, never mind what the reader thinks...

Can you actually clarify that?

Whoops... forgot about this thread...

I think you've misread 'strong' for 'wrong' in my post! I could see what my lecturer was driving at (i.e, its not an incorrect interpretation), but I just feel that that way of observing the poem actually detracted from it.

[LitNetIsGreat]

What makes an interpretation objectively (ugh, I hate using that word) correct or incorrect relies upon the author(s) herself/himself/themselves. Unfortunately, an author distributing a work to the masses, people s/he will never encounter nor have the ability to explain her/himself, bears the risk of subjecting the literary work to wrong interpretation; if the author has already died, sometimes enough commentary, interviews, documentation, and such exist for some readers to refer to for a more educated interpretation - disasters and sins to the literary arts, however, still exist. Interpreting takes practice, nonetheless, and no flawless expert exists, likely not even scholars who study Finnegans Wake for longer than Joyce took to write the book (some 17 years, if I remember correctly), and I can picture the man emitting a loud Irish guffaw in his grave every time someone opens the front cover of the 'novel.'
For those deceased authors, their posthumous works, works written anonymously, or works written by practically invisible authors (ahem, Salinger), they placed their slabs of paper at the risk of wrong interpretations the moment the first print whisked off the warm presses, including to literature instructors, educated scholars, and first-time readers. Some books receive more victimization than others, which can make them quite a bit more widely read, even if they get publicly banned, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lady Chatterly's Lover, The Bible (and most religious texts, for that matter), and most everything by writers mentioned in my previous post; only Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, and individuals allegedly 'inspired' can objectively critique interpretations to call them 'right,' 'wrong,' or 'on the right/wrong track.' In this case, I agree with JBI's estimated overlapping percentages, despite how extreme they sound:

All writers are already dead!

You might find it extremely insightful if you read the short essay by Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author". In this essay Barthes calls into question the very nature of interpretation and claims (in short) that all authors are dead upon the point of publication. Roughly what he meant by this is that the author is no better at interpreting his/her own work than a reader, upon publication the author just becomes another reader like anybody else with no more claim over the text than you or I.

With this in mind it matters little, if at all, what an author says about their own work in determining an interpretation according to Barthes, which I strongly subscribe to. This doesn't mean that you can't learn from the context of the author, you can, but the author can't have complete control over their own work, because that's impossible. You could also tie in the ideas of Freud quite well into this argument, there are other forces at question, much more things going on below the surface of the mind to tie a text down to any particular reading.

So it is impossible as you say above for the author to explain himself/herself because the author has little to say to us. When J.K. (ahem) Rowling said that Dumblebore was gay after the end of the HP series, that is just one possible interpretation like any other, and holds no real value at all. J.K Rowling is dead!