Am I a Good Reader??

I have mixed feelings about the "Good Readers and Good Writers" piece by Nabokov. He makes some great points about the art of writing and how a "major author" creates literature. On the other hand, when he talks about how to be a good reader, I am somewhat put off by his snarky attitude.

It's weird because in some instances I agree with his opinion. For example, when he talks about rereading a book. Nine times out of ten I will enjoy and appreciate a literary work more the second or third time I read it. The first time I read something I am trying to get all the facts and I'm just getting accustomed to the author's style of writing. But with each subsequent reading, I already know "the story" and I am able to look beyond it to find the book's true meaning and message.

While I agree with Nabokov that readers get more out of literature when they become rereaders, I don't agree with his "rules" for being a good reader, or as he says, a "major reader." Out of his list of ten definitions for a good reader, I just so happened to choose the "correct" four definitions, that a reader should have imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. While I agree that these four things are important to being a good reader, or even just an average reader, I don't agree that if one possesses any of the six other traits that he or she is a bad reader.

Of these six traits, Nabokov denounces one in particular: that the reader may identify with a character. I was blown away when he said the the worst thing a reader can do is identify himself with a character in the book. If anything, I think it lends itself more to a thorough understanding of the work. People gain more perspective from something, whether it is a book, movie, song, TV show, etc., when they can relate to it. And they can have a completely different "experience" with a work of literature than someone who cannot personally relate to the material. I am sure that pedophiles the world over got something entirely different out of Lolita than I did. Personal experience is not something that you can just push out of your mind when approaching a book, as Nabokov suggests. 

All in all, I enjoyed reading Nabokov's opinion of a "good reader," and I can appreciate his concern for the "correct" understanding and comprehension of literature, according to what he believes. But, authors should be receptive of readers finding alternative meaning in their work.

Thoughts on Madonna and Rand, in too/many/slashes

Since I missed last Thursday's class due to food poisoning (thanks Whole Foods!  I will probably return to you for dinner anyway, probably even within the next week or so,) I can't promise that anything I'm submitting will be original or even relevant.  I don't know if Madonna's "She's Not Me" is literature or not.  But I kind of doubt it.  Terry Eagleton's ambiguous, even nonexistent, definition of literature doesn't help solidify this conclusion at all.  Even at the very beginning, while reading it as a poem sans the faintest glimmer of recognition or "this sounds like nineties dance music," the prose style reeked of clichés and a lack of inspiration to me.  I sound sort of critical, I guess, maybe inappropriately condescending, but the words and phrases didn't seem beautiful or real or vivid or any of the things I think literature should be (e.g., "when you were here/it's all so clear." I mean, come on.)  I wonder if, after this semester, I'll change my mind?  Is this literature?

Clint:  thanks for the anecdote.  I completely agree regarding the desire to sift through others' opinions of literature in hopes of refining my own idea of it.  Incidentally I'm taking a course on Ayn Rand right now, and apparently she was very adamant that she was, first and foremost, a novelist (creator of literature) as opposed to a philosopher.  I'm sorry your date didn't inspire a second one.  But do you think that this girl's aversion to Rand renders it not-literature in her mind?  If so, I respectfully disagree: even prose that I hate (I'm looking at you, Alan Paton, Christa Wolf) has solid literary merit that I can't dispute.  I can recognize the importance/relevance/meaning of a work while still bemoaning its godawful prose style or readability or lack of proper dialogue construction.  There exist plenty of books that I absolutely loathed in high school, but that symbolize important moments in history or revolutionary ideas or whatever, and I know that.  In fact, I think sometimes I enjoy/respect/appreciate books more after an in-class discussion reveals a deeper meaning or a bigger picture illustrated by the work (case in point: Wuthering Heights.)  Has that ever happened to anyone else?  I should obviously note that I'm not a legitimate critic, either.  I'm a college student who is overly critical and who should probably read more but "doesn't have the time."  I'm hoping this class will change that, though, truly.  Essentially what I'm trying to say, however clumsily and elliptically, is that when it comes to literature, LIKING ≠ RESPECTING.  See you tomorrow.

Page 13

While I was reading the introduction to Eagleton's book, I was very interested in the anecdote on page 13 that describes I.A. Richard's experiment of showing poems to students without them knowing the authors or titles. Not surprisingly, many poems by highly revered authors were not as appreciated by the students as some of the poems by very obscure authors. It made me wonder: If we took a survey of, say, all of the students at UT, how many famous poets would receive praise from the students if their name wasn't attached to their work? Or perhaps it isn't that well-known authors receive undue laud only because of the status they have already earned, but maybe that less people are willing to give an unfamiliar author any consideration. After all, everyone knows that Ulysses is one of the greatest novels of all time; you must agree that it is a great work of literature. But how many works by undistinguished writers are praised world-wide?
This whole experiment reminded me of another story that I came across recently. Joshua Bell, one of the best violinists in the world, anonymously played some of the most complicated pieces ever written on a violin worth over three million dollars in a subway station in Washington, D.C. for forty-five minutes during rush hour. Amazingly, only a few people actually stopped and listened to the music, and the majority of them were children who were dragged away by their parents. I guess it just proves that setting and background greatly influence everything we do. A virtuoso isn't appreciated as much outside of a concert hall. Would supposed great works of literature be appreciated in places where the people know nothing about "great" literature?

Re: The Taming of Literature

     We're taught from grade-school in the form of definition. We're very rarely introduced to anything "abstract," and when we are, we're usually given an interpretation and told it's the "correct" one. This can make it hard to accept certain terms, like literature, for what they really are: interpretable. I like nice neat little definitions, but after getting over the initial shock of realizing that literature can't really be defined succinctly and universally, I am kind of comforted to know that literature can be whatever I think it is. It makes me warm and happy inside. 

      I really like the modern art example, it hit home. Two Summers ago I was in New York, and we went to the Museum of Modern Art. I remember very distinctly walking up to van Gogh's Starry Night and thinking "this is wonderful!" and then walking into the next room, seeing a huge canvas that had been painted solid blue, and thinking "Why the hell is this here? I've painted rooms blue before." Little juxtapositions like this happened all day, seeing Dali's The Persistence of Memory and then looking at Duchamp's Fountain (the urinal we talked about in class) blew my mind; I simply couldn't understand how anyone could compare the two. After reading the original blog, It made me think of when I hear people say "Who could read this?" in a completely disgusting manor and be talking about Shakespeare or Hemingway. I still don't understand some modern art, just like I don't understand some prose, but now I have a greater appreciation for how others may. 

     I'm really interested in "finding out" what literature is. Even though I feel as if I know that I'll never get a satisfactory answer, evaluating my standards compared to everyone else's makes me feel as if I know them a little better. It may sound kind of far-fetched, but I went on a date the other night and we eventually started talking about Ayn Rand. I'm somewhat of a fan, but my date absolutely despised her writing. Finding a girl who even knew Ayn Rand was a very refreshing experience, even if we didn't agree on her literary merit. We won't be going on another date (English majors and Biomedical Engineering majors don't mix well, apparently) but I took one very important lesson away from our dinner together: never assume that any prose is universally considered to be literature, because there are always plenty of people who believe the contrary. 

RE: Different Strokes (and a Bit of Other Things)

Nabokov states that, "[s]ince the master artist used his imagination in creating his book, it is natural and fair that the consumer of a book should use his imagination too," implying a novel establishes a give-and-take, "artistic harmonious" relationship between the author and the reader. Yes, this article focuses mostly on the writing and reading of fiction, but be imaginative as readers and pretend this standard is meant to be applied to all works of literature.

If we consider "She's Not Me" as a "nontraditional" form of literature, as Kevin has suggested, than by this one criterion alone, the song must be considered a poem of true literary merit, as it is bound to strike up some sort of emotional connection between Madonna and another individual based on lyrical content alone (I'm going to ignore the musical aspect since that's something else entirely). After all, Rachael's lunchbox-less eight-year-old cannot be discarded.

Deanna also points out another matter entirely, namely that "She's Not Me" was most likely written, performed, and produced entirely for financial profit. Is it possible for a work with an unwholesome (for lack of a better term) origin to truly be called a work of quality? How important is the author's intention when evaluating the greatness of his or her literary work? Then, must the intention be "pure" or may we evaluate it solely based upon its efficacy in reaching its intended goal? Of course, as Meredith(?) pointed out in class, we may not always be able to confirm that what we are gleaning from a text is what the author originally intended. In that case, what really matters is the meaning the reader infuses into the text, which brings us back to the whole Eye of the Beholder saga which many seem to agree with.

I think my intention is getting muddled up in this sea of rhetorical questions, so I'll basically boil this down into one: Which is more important? The authors intent in writing a work or the meaning the reader takes away from it?

Starting Over

So far, Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory has brought me no satisfaction. I had the same frustrations that Emily initially had, which was Eagleton was basically saying that there was no real definition of literature. One of the main reasons so many people love studying literature is the wide open spaces involved. There are so many ways to interpret a piece, and there are almost no limitations, but this is what scares me the most about reading and studying literature. To me, literature is a game, with no rules on how to play it. This book is simply adding more ambiguity to a subject that I feel is already ambiguous.
Before reading Literary Theory, and going to class last Thursday, I would not have considered Madonna's "she's no me" as literature. This might have been because (like Brandi said) I have never considered pop songs to hold true meaning. If this song had been handed out in another class that was not English, I would not have though twice about it. But being that I received this song in an English class, I began to think that maybe there was something I was not seeing. Reading Literary Theory, and thinking about what Eagleton was saying, made me I realized I have no Idea what literature is. I am falling down a hole, and Eagleton is saying the hole only gets deeper.
I really feel that I have grown up with the wrong Idea of what Literature is, and being pulled out of my comfort zone does not feel spectacular. It's like building a house with a bad foundation, the first step in fixing it is to tear the house down. My house is coming down, and I feel that reading the rest of what Eagleton has to say, and just talking this whole thing out with the geniuses in my class will help me lay a firm foundation so I can build a stronger house.

The Taming of Literature

After reading the introduction and first chapter of Literary Theory, I was expecting for some sort of concrete and definitive definition of literature to be given. The very name of the first section of the book, “What is Literature?,” invites the reader in with a simple question, and yet after numerous pages, it becomes evident that no one specific explanation is going to define literature. Like most people, I look for simple, all-encompassing explanations and after reading forty six pages of a relatively dry text, I was a little annoyed that the initial question was still hanging, unanswered. Soon after my mild frustration and annoyance had ceased, I realized that by not giving a single definition, Eagleton had provided me with exactly what I needed. There is no one way to define literature. Like Eagleton explained, literature changes with the times and because of that, no formal classification or requirements are continually possible. For me, the very appeal of literature is that it cannot be easily defined and when it is attempted to be broken down and domesticated, some works are going to be unavoidably left out. Who are we to say what is or is not literature?
A similar argument could be the case for modern art. It is now fairly well accepted that no one has the supreme judgment to say what is or is not art. When an artist stacks three ordinary boxes on top of each other in a gallery and starts the asking price at one thousand dollars, the majority of viewers would not think twice about buying such simplistic “art”; however, there is always someone who this piece will speak to. There is always someone who is more than willing to pay ridiculously insane amounts of money for something that might more often than not be mistaken for trash. And because of that one person, the three stacked cardboard boxes are art. I believe that the criteria for literature should follow the same mind state. Even if the greater mass of readers do not regard Madonna’s dance single “She’s not me” as literature, (for the record, I would not consider this literature by any means) someone in the world highly reveres this piece of work and if he wants to call it literature, he can be my guest. It is not my place, or anyone else’s, to set parameters for what is literature and by taming the definition of literature, much of its allure is lost.