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Originally Posted by Glice
You always talk about art in terms of power, control and orthodoxy. That's all I was getting at; you always argue in terms of empirical sciences. Neither are appropriate here. You're a smart chap, but you're frustratingly dismissive of interpretations falling outside of your ken. That's all I'm saying.
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always always never always. ok so power/control/orthodoxy? in which way? the orthodoxy, if anything, is to apply interpretations.
we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya, but you can't make me believe that each buendia represents a latin american nation without some sort of textual proof. besides, such correspondences would make the characters very stiff and restricted in their possiblities. "this guy is argentina, he must be a boastful loudmouth" "this one is honduras, nobody gives a shit about him".
i don't deny people the pleasure of their fantasies but i do not agree that said fantasies are the meaning of the text or are even in the text.
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Originally Posted by Glice
Above, for instance, you've apparently absolutely negated the act of interpretation because sometimes people get it wrong, or say something a bit silly. I don't read books for arid austerity - I actually read them to avoid that. Do books have no erotic value for you?
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that's precisely what my books have the most for me: erotic value. the ability to give pleasure. do you ever fuck saying "this is the suspended congress position" "here we are doing the dirty sanchez, it's meaning conjugates anal and phallic aggression"? perhaps you do, but i can't concieve of a more boring way to fuck than to do a play-by-play description and analysis of the act.
interpretation is fine when it is called for-- in translation, diplomacy, a bit of hermeneutics to aid reading. but interpretation is the lowest form of reading pleasure i can think of. it's almost a denial of reading itself. it says that the pleasure is elsewhere--not in the reading, but in the interpretation itself. which is, granted, what eggheads love to do-- not read books, but write papers about them.