![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingredheadIt's always so much harder to interpret the texts that I really really like and engage with, because I feel the need to come to some kind of point that equally satisfies my intellectual and emotional responses to the text. I don't think that the emotional response can be discounted. When my emotional response is less dramatic -- when I'm working with a text that I don't engage with as much, or perhaps even don't engage with at all -- it's ridiculously easy to figure out what I think it "means."
And then, there's Pride and Prejudice, and I'm sitting there staring at my pages and pages of notes and while they all sound intelligent, none of them actually account for the way that the novel makes me feel -- about the characters, about their situations, about the whole process of falling in love or writing novels. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is a big problem.
I have all of these ideas that, from a purely analytical standpoint, make perfect sense. I feel like I'm approaching the text from a sort-of interesting/unique angle that's yielding credible and interesting results. But none of the results deal in any way with why I am so in love with Pride and Prejudice and why it matters. My analysis is all about books and men as commodities that circulate, but my gut's telling me that this is only really tangential to the substance of the novel, which is that sometimes they don't and how do you deal with that and why don't they?
(Forgive me. I'm making no sense -- not even to myself. But I can't stop.)
I have things to say about P&P, but they either feel so obvious, or not at all in line with my overall thesis topic, or not at all in line with the way the novel makes me feel. I feel like this novel represents a major learning experience for both Elizabeth and Darcy (because obviously it does) but my interpretation isn't getting anywhere near the core of the beautiful complexity of their relationship. I know it's about re-reading, re-evaluating each other, but why does Austen think re-reading matters and how does this show up elsewhere in a novel where people are literally taken at face value and libraries are socially-charged (if not always social) spaces? How does the large argument about private vs. public that's going on intersect with the personal learning experience of these two characters?
(Why am I even writing this on LJ? Answer: I need an audience, and the only alternative is to talk to myself. Which, they tell me, is not healthy. But which I will probably resort to anyway.)
And then, there's Pride and Prejudice, and I'm sitting there staring at my pages and pages of notes and while they all sound intelligent, none of them actually account for the way that the novel makes me feel -- about the characters, about their situations, about the whole process of falling in love or writing novels. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is a big problem.
I have all of these ideas that, from a purely analytical standpoint, make perfect sense. I feel like I'm approaching the text from a sort-of interesting/unique angle that's yielding credible and interesting results. But none of the results deal in any way with why I am so in love with Pride and Prejudice and why it matters. My analysis is all about books and men as commodities that circulate, but my gut's telling me that this is only really tangential to the substance of the novel, which is that sometimes they don't and how do you deal with that and why don't they?
(Forgive me. I'm making no sense -- not even to myself. But I can't stop.)
I have things to say about P&P, but they either feel so obvious, or not at all in line with my overall thesis topic, or not at all in line with the way the novel makes me feel. I feel like this novel represents a major learning experience for both Elizabeth and Darcy (because obviously it does) but my interpretation isn't getting anywhere near the core of the beautiful complexity of their relationship. I know it's about re-reading, re-evaluating each other, but why does Austen think re-reading matters and how does this show up elsewhere in a novel where people are literally taken at face value and libraries are socially-charged (if not always social) spaces? How does the large argument about private vs. public that's going on intersect with the personal learning experience of these two characters?
(Why am I even writing this on LJ? Answer: I need an audience, and the only alternative is to talk to myself. Which, they tell me, is not healthy. But which I will probably resort to anyway.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:51 am (UTC)I think this is what turns kids who like reading off of literary analysis, and (gasp!) what makes kids who don't like reading not like reading in the first place. I was in the former camp until English 4AP; now I'm still wary.
It's because it's so obvious that there's more to the novel than [whatever's being discussed]. Some novels really are just vehicles for their messages, but clearly there is a difference between good fiction writing and bad fiction writing beyond the clarity.
I recently came across this Calvin and Hobbes comic in a re-read of the Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat collection. I hadn't thought about it much before, but having recently watched a few old movies, I realized there was something to that last line. Movies these days are heavy with attempts to "manipulate" emotions, but I prefer that to the dry "here's what happened" style of some old movies. Yes, we get things like Avatar where they go overboard, or cases like this SMBC comic where they have to hit you over the head with the emotions, message, and plot. But as a director/cinematographer myself, I have to say manipulating emotions is a skill, an important one.
And that's true in books as well. How a book makes you feel is a testament to the skill of the author, and may indeed be an important part of the message. And are definitely why it matters.
A book is not good or important because someone says it is.
(More on this in a future blog post.)