Are we reading things into novels the authors themselves never intended?

[ninwa]

I've always thought this, but reading this article confirmed it for me.

Interesting snippets:

What probably pissed Bradbury off more than anything was that people completely disregarded his interpretation of his own book. In fact, when Bradbury was a guest lecturer in a class at UCLA, students flat-out told him to his face that he was mistaken and that his book is really about censorship. He walked out.

Machiavelli was the Stephen Colbert of the Renaissance.

(lol)

So he decided to write a book about a world that followed the laws of abstract mathematics, purely to point out the batshit lunacy of it. Things keep changing size and proportion before Alice's eyes, not because she's tripping on bad acid, but because the world is based on stupid postmodern algebra with shit like imaginary numbers that don't even make any sense god dammit.

Since the novel came out in the late 50s, everyone assumed he was describing the thought and feelings of that era, but the events of the novel took place almost a decade before. He wasn't even writing about the era he supposedly defined.

After Nietzsche died, Elisabeth inherited the rights to his works and went about diligently re-editing them with a "kill all the Jews" subtext. It didn't help that Nietzsche's thought-baton was then picked up by the philosopher Martin Heidegger -- you guessed it: Nazi.

Nietzsche actually hated anti-Semites, having refused to attend his sister's wedding because she was marrying a Nazi, and even wrote that "anti-Semites should be shot." We have his sister to thank for the "blond beast" confusion. She, Hitler and decades of disapproving philosophy students interpret this as an allusion to the Aryan race. In fact, Nietzsche was just describing lions.

I'd always wondered during my VCE whether George Orwell, Shakespeare etc. were rolling in their graves going "NO THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT DAMNIT ARGHHHH".

[fady_22]

My school's literature class had the author of the text they were studying come in one day. They bombarded him with questions concerning their own interpretations, and he actually told them that he had never meant his writing to be interpreted in that way. Which is why I believe that VCE Literature (and to a lesser extent VCE English) is a subject that tests bull-shitting abilities more than anything else. Which, really, is a necessary life skill.

[chrisjb]

My school's literature class had the author of the text they were studying come in one day. They bombarded him with questions concerning their own interpretations, and he actually told them that he had never meant his writing to be interpreted in that way. Which is why I believe that VCE Literature (and to a lesser extent VCE English) is a subject that tests bull-shitting abilities more than anything else. Which, really, is a necessary life skill.

+1

[stonecold]

My school's literature class had the author of the text they were studying come in one day. They bombarded him with questions concerning their own interpretations, and he actually told them that he had never meant his writing to be interpreted in that way. Which is why I believe that VCE Literature (and to a lesser extent VCE English) is a subject that tests bull-shitting abilities more than anything else. Which, really, is a necessary life skill.

+1

+2

VCE English is a wank.

Books and films were made to be enjoyed, not to be dissected to the point where they lose all meaning.

EngLang should just become the standard.  At least it teaches you something useful like grammar.

[Cianyx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUV2Yl8gsI
We should take a note from this dude

[Fyrefly]

My school's literature class had the author of the text they were studying come in one day. They bombarded him with questions concerning their own interpretations, and he actually told them that he had never meant his writing to be interpreted in that way. Which is why I believe that VCE Literature (and to a lesser extent VCE English) is a subject that tests bull-shitting abilities more than anything else. Which, really, is a necessary life skill.

+1

+2

VCE English is a wank.

Books and films were made to be enjoyed, not to be dissected to the point where they lose all meaning.

EngLang should just become the standard.  At least it teaches you something useful like grammar.

This.

I enjoy reading. I do not enjoy dissection.

[burbs]

Same, that's why I have the entire Popular Penguins set but dont do lit

[Eriny]

I think people obviously get interpretations very wrong (as in the above examples) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to any interpretation there's enough evidence for.

This is because if you're an author and you've written a book, you might not know the significance of it until later, or you may never realise the significance. Sometimes people other than the author can point it out because they can see the big picture a little more clearly. For instance, John Marsden has said that when he was writing the book 'So much to tell you', he didn't think that it related to his life and his relationship with his dad at all. Several years after its publication he realised that his biography did play an important part in the book. What I'm saying is that the author isn't always right in their interpretation of their own work.

Additionally, texts that were written ages ago will have relics from that era in them that the author wouldn't really have thought about including because it was so normal, but would now be quite significant for readers today and would warrant explanation. A really good example of this was The Crucible, which the author thought was about the Salem witch trials. But, as it was written in the time of McCarthyism, it has features of its context such as the fear of the unknown that was rampant at the time and people wouldn't necessarily have identified then that they could identify now.

[Eriny]

My school's literature class had the author of the text they were studying come in one day. They bombarded him with questions concerning their own interpretations, and he actually told them that he had never meant his writing to be interpreted in that way. Which is why I believe that VCE Literature (and to a lesser extent VCE English) is a subject that tests bull-shitting abilities more than anything else. Which, really, is a necessary life skill.

+1

+2

VCE English is a wank.

Books and films were made to be enjoyed, not to be dissected to the point where they lose all meaning.

EngLang should just become the standard.  At least it teaches you something useful like grammar.

Most of us have a fairly intuitive grasp of grammar because we grew up with our language system. Though grammar is quite an interesting topic, it's not necessary for a good grasp of the English language. People can function perfectly well and can display perfect grammar even if they don't know what a noun or a subject or an object or what an intransitive verb is. I think it only really becomes necessary to learn grammar when we are trying to learn other languages that we don't intuitively know.

[Blakhitman]

I've been saying this to my english (and lit) teachers ever since I can remember.

[ninwa]

I enjoy reading. I do not enjoy dissection.

+1

'tis why I avoid "high literature"

[Spreadbury]

Actually, Machiavelli was totally just trolling. Far from being the spiritual patriarch of the Gambino crime family, he was a renowned proponent of free republics, as noted in a few obscure texts called everything else he ever wrote. The reason The Prince endured the ages while the rest of his philosophy gathered dust in the back of an old library warehouse is chiefly 1) it's really short, and 2) it angries up the blood. By far the best way to get a book on the best-seller list is to write something that pisses everyone off

This made me laugh, so did the picture of the guy from gran torino. I love this site

[EvangelionZeta]

I think people obviously get interpretations very wrong (as in the above examples) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to any interpretation there's enough evidence for.

This is because if you're an author and you've written a book, you might not know the significance of it until later, or you may never realise the significance. Sometimes people other than the author can point it out because they can see the big picture a little more clearly. For instance, John Marsden has said that when he was writing the book 'So much to tell you', he didn't think that it related to his life and his relationship with his dad at all. Several years after its publication he realised that his biography did play an important part in the book. What I'm saying is that the author isn't always right in their interpretation of their own work.

Additionally, texts that were written ages ago will have relics from that era in them that the author wouldn't really have thought about including because it was so normal, but would now be quite significant for readers today and would warrant explanation. A really good example of this was The Crucible, which the author thought was about the Salem witch trials. But, as it was written in the time of McCarthyism, it has features of its context such as the fear of the unknown that was rampant at the time and people wouldn't necessarily have identified then that they could identify now.

This.  I'm a firm believer in "death of the author" in regards to interpretation - it's not treating reading as "high literature", it's basically accepting that when people write things they don't always consciously realise what they're doing.

[MuggedByReality]

   Reminds me of how Hitchcock helped his granddaughter with some homework which involved analysing one of his films; the h/w only got a 'C'.

[Ghost!]

I've been saying this to my english (and lit) teachers ever since I can remember.