The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.
-- Flannery O'Connor,
rejecting a wild interpretation of her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find,"
from a letter dated 28 March 1961,
in "The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor"
rejecting a wild interpretation of her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find,"
from a letter dated 28 March 1961,
in "The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor"
This reminded me of an incident from my college days. I was a film criticism major, and being an undergraduate was much vexed by the grad students who tended to throw their weight around.
Two of them particularly annoyed me, Greg B. and Louis B. The latter once offered an interpretation of a classic film, whose director I later had the opportunity to speak to in person. When I described Louis' interpretation to him, he dismissed it and said there was nothing like that at all the scene. I dutifully reported this back to Louis, who scornfully said: "Well, you can talk about intentionality all you want, but..."
Louis is the main reason I wanted never to become a grad student.
technorati: Flannery O'Connor, literary theory
1 comment:
This makes me think about something I've wrestled with as a grad student--a question that many of my professors have posed over the course of my academic career: Is it *possible* to misinterpret a work of art? This goes straight to the issue of the fallacy of the author's intent, and I tend to believe that there cannot be *mis*interpretations, only effective or ineffective interpretations. And the fact that the author Flannery O'Connor does not believe in interpretation does not mean that interpretation is a worthless activity. If it were, well, I wouldn't have a career, and actually, the world would probably be a much poorer place. I think I express this better in a post on my blog: here's the
link. Good issue to bring up; would love to hear what everyone else thinks.
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