-------- Original Message --------
Coming at the excellent and agreeable thoughts of MR [unedited
below] from the opposite direction, I doubt that VN would have
written puzzles for which the answer is NO ANSWER. The rigor of
mathematics poses propositions, both obviously true and dubious,
which have yet to be proven decisively, or to be decisively proven
to be unprovable. VN, a rigorous thinker, would have found the
unprovable NO ANSWER solution too easy and entirely unacceptable.
Mea culpa! This line of thought embraces the taboo of considering
"the author's intent"; worse insists that the work-owning author knew
his intention, accomplished it either well or poorly, and created
works limited by the constraints of time, place and station. So be it
- the pendulum swings.
The pleasures VN provides interpreting academics and old fashioned
everyday readers are quite various, modified as they must be by
predictable and idiosyncratic intents and constraints. And interesting!
Sandy Drescher
>
>
> 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.