I finished the first chapter of “Literary Criticism: An Introduction” and it’s really getting the thoughts churning. What I find so interesting is how criticism really goes hand-in-hand with philosophy. Studying philosophy can radically shake (and shape) your outlook on life, but there’s a lot of philosophy that feels like textbook cases of mental masturbation.

Everything I have heard of New Criticism I have generally disliked, mostly because of the sancitmonious way in which its proponents act as though it’s the only game in town. Admittedly, I don’t know enough to argue otherwise and hopefully that will change in the near future as I learn more about the field.

I think it’s because of my more-or-less strong belief in determinism that feels incompatible with the “author doesn’t matter” aspect of New Criticism. To quote Wikipedia, “determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur.”

So with that in mind, every author’s personal experience (as well as a lot of unrelated incidents) will lead up to the writing of, say, Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” New Criticism says (or at least from my understanding) that Hemingway doesn’t matter, it’s just the words on the page. To me this seems utterly counterintuitive. I don’t think the point of literary criticism is to pinpoint authorial intent, but I think understanding an author’s history may (or may not) open new interpretations to a work. For me, the litmus test is the plausibility of the reading.

For example, I recently read John Kessel’s criticism of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” and found it compelling. In Kessel’s own words: “The result [of the events of Ender's Game is] a character who exterminates an entire race and yet remains fundamentally innocent. The purpose of this paper is to examine the methods Card uses to construct this story of a guiltless genocide, to point out some contradictions inherent in this scenario, and to raise questions about the intention-based morality advocated by Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.”

Kessel never claims Card espouses these beliefs—again, the New Criticism “only the words on the page”—yet makes a strong case for this reading. What I find interesting is that Card is also a Mormon. There are a lot of things going on in terms of authoritarianism and personal destiny in “Ender’s Game” but, if I understand New Criticism correctly, it’s taboo to ascribe a “Mormon reading” to the novel. Or perhaps more accurately, that would be one interpretation; an interpretation which may be just as valid as say, a supported Hindu reading.

To me, this seems borderline absurd. I guess if one can make a strong argument for Hindu precepts in “Ender’s Game,” go for it. Can’t argue with the words on the page. Yet this also strikes me as an example of an academic simply jerking off. I doubt such a reading would be enlightening for the average reader, either for further insight into “Ender’s Game” or Hinduism; but it might be enlightening for the average reader to understand the book in the context of Mormon philosophy. Or it might not. So the concept that two well-supported arguments about the book (the hypothetical Hindu reading [which I'm sure doesn't exist] and the Mormon one) can co-exist as equals gives me a wet underwear feeling.

[My knowledge of Card, Mormonism, and Hinduism is all very general so don't drill me on specifics here. I actually read "Ender's Game" in a daym, was underwhelmed by it, and therefore don't think much about it.]

Rereading this, I realize I’m kind of all over the place but that’s why I titled this post “More for me than you.” I’m trying to hash all of this out. I guess the New Criticism critic would likely say that you wouldn’t need to know Card was a Mormon to make an educated Mormon reading, and I would probably agree—you don’t need to know, but is it disastrous if you do? I mean, using this example I would expect to be denounced for saying Card is a Mormon, as if that fact is not only irrelevant but actually damaging to that particular reading. (Which reminds me of the billion arguments I’ve had about Tolkien and Catholicism in Lord of the Rings. People always say that just because Tolkien is a Catholic doesn’t mean that that’s what the story is about—as if that line of reasoning wipes away the three hundred thousand examples of Catholic philosophy rooted at the core of the story. It’s almost as if Tolkien’s devout Catholicism negates any Catholic reading of the text…) But I also agree you shouldn’t read an author’s biography as a way to figure out what they’re going on about.

Okay, I’m done here. Time to go be disappointed in another episode of the Sopranos.

Current Mood – Brain Twisted |