luka

Well-known member
That authorial intention isn't relevant. It's about what you get out of it.

I've got a lot of sympathy with the position. It's why I like those kind of deep readings you see in that shining documentary. And no author would claim they are aware of everything their work implies. The idea of the unconscious alone makes that impossible. But at the same time I can't personally completely dismiss the notion that although there might not be a single right way to read a text, there are numerous wrong ways.
 

version

Well-known member
Beckett on The Wake's just popped into my head again,

On turning to the ‘Work in Progress’ we find that the mirror is not so convex. Here is direct expression — pages and pages of it. And if you don’t understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it. You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to read the other. This rapid skimming and absorption of the scant cream of sense is made possible by what tImay call a continuous process of copious intellectual salivation.

[...]

Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read -—- or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.
 
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luka

Well-known member
You have to be able to support the reading with textual evidence. It has to hold together. There has to be some kind of integrity to the process. Well, ideally anyway.
 

version

Well-known member
Form completely eludes me with Prynne because I struggle to even read the lines as he's arranged them. I instinctively complete the phrases and sentences.
 

line b

Well-known member
Do you not experience a game?
Poor wording on my end maybe. I think this is more about approach. During interpretation, are you trying to solve the poem like a game or are you trying to flesh out the experiencing of that poem. When you finish a game, you've got schematics for how others can get from the start point to the end point, but did you play the game in a way that you can explain why the game directed you as such? why its a good game?
 
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luka

Well-known member
Form completely eludes me with Prynne because I struggle to even read the lines as he's arranged them. I instinctively complete the phrases and sentences.

The ones nearest the start are a lot more straightforward. Still baffling, but a lot less so.
 

version

Well-known member
You have to be able to support the reading with textual evidence. It has to hold together. There has to be some kind of integrity to the process. Well, ideally anyway.
The evidence itself is open to interpretation though. I could read something of Prynne's and say he's talking about industry and you could say he's talking about the creative process and we'd probably struggle to come to any sort of conclusion.
 

luka

Well-known member
Same as like, reality man. That's why people come to all different conclusions about stuff despite having much the same evidence presented to them.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's one of the many reasons I love conspiracy stuff. It's taking the same basic data and twisting it into completely different shapes.
 

version

Well-known member
I think something like Kubrick faking the moon landing's another layer of interpretation. It's not like people interpreting the meaning behind Jack appearing in the picture at the end. Everyone sees that, the debate's over what it means. With the stuff about the moon landing, you have to interpret things a certain way before you can get to the point of interpreting them that way.
 

version

Well-known member
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