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JA said: Here we have a novel about a man who writes a poem about
looking
for a way out of life, submerged in the notes of a crazy narrator who
wants
to see in a poem that has nothing whatsoever to do with him minute
reflections of his own concerns so as to justify the loss in his
life--for
the brief span of the novel this reference mania is catching,
reflections
between poem, the commentator's life, and his colorful multi-faceted
fantasy
wink and sparkle at us through the prose like the hidden jewels, but an
"answer" always eludes us, even whether or not Zembla is "real" or not
hasn't been definitively pinned down. I thought the sense of an answer
always eluding our passionate readerly search was the point.
MR: I have a bit of a different take on this. To say that "the point" is
that there is no final "answer" is itself a kind of exclusive
interpretation, a declaration that this conclusion is, in fact, the
answer.
My concern with this notion is that it tends to shut down all further
attempts to understand the narrative of the novel. If we say that the
point
is that there is no Answer, why bother to look for them anymore? The
danger
is that we will lose attempts like Brian Boyd's. Even if I don't prefer
all
of Brian's conclusions, I would understand exponentially less about PF
had
he not pursued a more definitive interpretation of the novel. This
reminds
me of the debates I used to have in grad school regarding the different
schools of lit crit. I often heard the lament that the feminists or the
marxists or the new historicists (take your pick) were all so narrow and
absurd in their interpretations. Now there was of course some truth to
that
criticism, but for me it to easily dismissed the value of these
different
schools: that each of them, by being a bit extreme, has stretched the
boundaries of what we thought we knew and has opened up perspectives we
would not have imagined otherwise. Even if, in the end, I don't find a
new
historicist reading of Bleak House particularly captivating, I probably
have
learned something about the book that I didn't know before.
All this is a way of saying that I hope we can tolerate, and even
relish,
the enthusiasm and engagement that goes into those theories that, in the
end, we may not prefer.
Best,
Matt