a meditation on authorial intention.

or, in defense of the literary critic.

literary criticism, and especially postmodern literary criticism, seems to be defended mostly by its practicioners and roundly given contempt by everyone else. it is often denigrated as "bullshit" or, more scathingly, as the critic reading him or herself into the author's work and not reading the author.

admittedly theories like "the death of the author" do not help this perception any.

as someone who has been trained in and practises literary criticism to a certain degree, it should not be surprising that i am defending it. but i do believe it is a valid method of inquiry, and it has important things to say. it is this belief that led me to where i am today, a graduate student. i started down this path one evening, standing under a tv monitor in the lobby where i was taking registrations for a conference and listening to the opening night speaker. he was condemning literary criticsm and postmodernism in general. at the time, i was only a few years out of my undergrad, which had heavily featured these theories, and as i was listening, i realized i was muttering at nearly every pause of the speaker, "no, that's wrong." i went and expressed my disagreement with one of the conference organizers, and 4 1/2 years later, i've just finished my first year in grad school. so i'm putting my money where my mouth is ;)

anyway. we've all seen cases (or we have if we follow this kind of thing) where a critic offers an opinion about what a book is about, or what ideas or themes or philosophies it might contain, and the author says, "no, that's all wrong." depending on who you like better, usually either you come away from the debate with the idea that the critic is an idiot or the author is a petulant control freak.

i would suggest neither of these are healthy.

is it not possible that both could be right? the author certainly had an intention in mind when writing (and only living authors have the ability to defend their intention), but intention is not everything. context, context, context. the author is a contextual being. the premise of literary criticism is that that context might inject itself into the work, whether the author meant to or not, whether the author was even aware of it or not. communication is a two-way street: you speak, i receive. you cannot, however, control what i receive. you might use certain strategies to avoid ambiguity, but your context will dictate certain things to you, and mine will dictate things to me.

let us take an example. an author writes a science fiction novel. a feminist critic reads the novel and declares it to be a boorish defense of patriarchy. the author protests there was no intention to talk about patriarchy one way or another in the novel. the critic points out settings, language, characterisations, and plot devices which point to a worldview which views patriarchy as beneficial. the author complains the critic is a feminist, so he or she must be reading his or her own ideology into the critique. the critic claims that it is merely his or her background in feminist ideology shows the characteristics in the novel, but they are there regardless.

both people are probably right. we must believe the author when he or she says the intention was not there. however, his or her philosophical stance will colour the novel. someone who believes men have a natural right to rule will not (unless trying very hard or possibly as a challenge) write a novel where, say, an all-female society is given a positive assessment. there may have been no intent to include gender views in the novel, but they will be there nonetheless, simply because they are the author's context.

at this point in the debate, the ethical thing is for the critic to accept the author's assertion of his or her own intentionality, but not necessarily to back down on the critique. sadly, too often in my experience, it is only the latter that happens. this is often easier because the author is dead (in the case of the literature i analyze, often long dead), and unable to contest the critic's reading. as valid as that reading is, i still think that the critic always ought to be prepared to admit that what he or she sees may not be what the author intended. however, this often gives power to the analysis. if the author did not intend the ideology betrayed in the writing, it means that it provides, perhaps, a clearer window into the author's context, society, culture, etc, since it is unshaped by concious intention. the conclusions of literary criticism are often accurate and valid. but they should also be humble.

see? i said i would come up with something interesting to post.

finals are over.

i'll try to think of something interesting to say soon.

facebook.

just say no.

current reading.

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
by Donald Miller

a friend lent this to me. it is... very rambly. my initial reaction was that it reminds me of a christian Catcher in the Rye. this was before i reached the spot in his book where he says he loves that book. so i guess my literary analysis skills are still up to snuff *grin*

it's a very... honest book. he's got his filters off, which is something unusual for a christian author.

no, you stupid cat, stop chewing on it, this isn't my book, i have to give it back!

spring.

passover, easter, the equinox. flip-flops. allergies. not in that order.

allergies appear to be bad this year. either that, or i have one last cold.

back to school today after two weeks off. one more paper left to write (due tomorrow).

somehow the daffodils pre-empted the crocuses this year.

yeah, that's about it. happy spring.

consumption & current reading.

for... er, the winter-gift-giving-holidays, he bought me a sony ebook reader ("touch edition" - i'd link to sony, but it's a terrible flash page). i says "holidays" because he went out and bought it something like 2 weeks before christmas, brought it home, wrapped it, and then decided i should open it two days later because he wasn't patient enought to wait until christmas. so call it my hannukah gift.

anyway. i had done some of the research and opted for the sony mostly because i spent $40 printing pdfs of journal articles for one of my papers last semester and decided that not only was the price ridiculous, but killing the trees was as well. the kindle and the nook (which wasn't out yet at the time) are both geared toward reading actual books, whereas i was going to use mine for research. and ironically, the sony was actually the most open model, handling pdfs natively (drm and no drm), word docs given word installed on the same machine, undrm-ed epub files, rentable-from-public-libraries epubs, drmed epubs, and all of google books.

it's been pretty nice, actually. i've been reading pdfs and word docs either downloaded for research or from my professors on the train on the way to class. the screen is a little glare-y, as most reviews note, but adjusting the angle slightly away from a direct light source solves the problem. i like the touchscreen, and i love being able to make notes and underline things with the included stylus.

i have also discovered that the sony ebook store carries all of jim butcher's stuff. i've been reading his dresden files for a couple years now, but he started another series recently. i broke down today and bought one. it was a surprisingly painless experience: choose the book, enter payment info into the sony reader software, and it downloads automatically. then, similar to the ipod, it authorizes your reader for the drm and transfers it over usb. i would, of course, prefer to have non-drm options, but i realize that's not terribly realistic yet, although it may be coming. i do have 12 un-drmed ebooks i got from tor's promotion a few years ago, which was an apparent success financially speaking. but since i have a sony reader, i might as well encourage more publishers to opt for sony's store over, say, amazon.

divide by zero.

so coke has come out with new "portion controlled" 7.5oz cans. this makes sense for the high-fructose-corn-syrup-impregnated beverages.

but they've also come out with 7.5oz cans of diet coke and coke zero. how do i know? we got a free 8-pack of the coke zero cans yesterday due to a supermarket promotion.

now. a 12oz can of coke zero is 0 calories. a 7.5oz can of coke zero is... yes. 0 calories. so why go through the effort of "portion controlling" a zero-calorie beverage? we switched to coke zero a while ago, because it does taste more like real coke than diet coke (ew).

but i'm a little confused by the purpose of this product. unless it's for people like me, who can barely finish a 12oz can of coke (unless i'm deydrated or eating something salty). but given the whole no-calorie thing, what would prompt me to stop buying cases of 12 12oz cans, and instead buy 8 7.5oz cans? the financial difference is miniscule. the calorie difference is nonexistant. why did they bother?

winter cookery.

it's snowing. again. another foot of snow is predicted by the end of the day tomorrow.

seriously. this is getting a bit ridiculous.

with all the snow and cold and stuff, i've been cooking things that only get cooked in winter. a chicken has been roasted, the meat is in the fridge, and stock is in the freezer (i put off writing the paper this time, so i actually got stock).

and now lasagne is in the oven. lasagne is one of those dishes that i really just can't cook in the summer. i don't know if it's the hour in the oven, or just the heaviness of the noodles and cheese. unfortunately, it means making it with dried herbs, but hey. nothing's perfect. i have my own meatless recipe that i made up a while ago. maybe i'll make this next time. if i can talk him into eating it.

snowmageddon.

12" saturday, then 21" wednesday. wow. haven't seen snow like this since i left mcgill. this is a zoomed-in picture of the golf from yesterday morning before we dug out. the antenna was almost completely engulfed.

it was nice having a couple days off... kind of like an extra weekend :) school was cancelled and i telecommuted to work.

guess i should do some homework anyway.

click the picture for my collection from the last 2 days. i got to play with the "snow" mode on my camera.

winter.

what the fucking fuck?

groundhog doesn't lie, i guess.

and i got the cars all dug out, too. i would probably love this if i didn't have a car, and a job, and wasn't in graduate school.

oh well. better get more firewood, i guess.