Monthly Archives: November 2008

51: How to Read / How to Listen

In brief:

Among other ways of reading and listening, the literal sense is always available, as is the ironic sense. “What the writer intended” is relevant, but not conclusive. Interpretation is the reader’s to determine, not the writer’s.

At length:

Several centuries ago, scholars studying the Bible realized that reading it literally wasn’t sufficient to explicate its entire meaning. While (at that time, anyway) not questioning its literal truth, they also developed supple, and subtle, methods of interpretation beyond the literal. Sometimes the text itself suggested additional meanings, most obviously in the Parables; at others, the scholars went beyond what the writers of the Bible may have intended, but felt these extended meanings to be faithful to the spirit of the book. A famous example of the latter is referring to Jesus as “the second Adam”.

Northrop Frye (see especially Anatomy of Criticism) and other critics have identified these ways to read a text, often called “levels of interpretation”:

Allegorical

Anagogical

Analogical

Formal

Literal/historical

Literal/descriptive

Metaphorical

Moral [‘tropological’]

Mythical

Prophetic

Symbolic

Typical (= of types)

The literal sense is always available to the reader, but may not be the richest or most informative. But what’s missing here? The list doesn’t include Ironic. Now, it’s conventional to view irony as inhering in the author’s intention, not in the reader’s interpretation. But, in the postmodern view that the writer cannot be privileged — he’s just another reader, and is granted no special wisdom — we must view irony as another of the “ways of understanding”.

So how does irony function in this role? At its simplest, it’s exactly the opposite of literal:

Literal: You’re likable enough, Hillary.

Ironic: You’re not likable enough, Hillary.

[Political sidebar: Who says you need to be likable to be President? SEE: Johnson, Lyndon; Nixon, Richard.]

Further reading: See Wikipedia articles on Irony; Hermeneutics; Northrop Frye.

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50: Some Vivid Language

Examples:

“This sucker’s goin’ down!” (quoted in NY Times) – George Bush, about the financial system, as the crisis hit.

“Get over it!” – Marion Barry, quondam mayor of D.C., upon catching flak for an unpopular decision.

“Bitch set me up!” – same, upon later being nabbed in a drug sting.

The moral: Some public figures known for verbose nonsense can, in a crisis, actually speak a vigorous and vivid kind of English.

48: “The Fraud Stars” — a junk email

The following appeared in my inbox today, and probably in several million others as well:

Welcome  to Western Union
Send Money Worldwide
Address; St, Peter & PaulRoad Cotonou Benin Rep.
Attention Beneficiary ,

The Board of Federal Ministry of Finance Benin Republic are hereby to notify you of your payment inherited funds  after the meeting held on 18th of July 2008.  His  Excellence the PRESIDENT OF FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF BENIN  has Instructed this Department to send your funds through western union money transfer for easy receiveing of your inherinted funds without any further delay to avoid paying money to the fraud stars that is going on through Courier Company and fake bank in africa. Because we know that some bank and Courier Company have fall you in nigeria and other part of Africa. but is not going to happen again as long as you are going follow up the instruction.

[It goes on to the expected conclusion.]


47: The Great Simplifying Assumptions

#1:  Whatever happens is typical.

#2:  Intention is what happens.

#3:  Speech belongs to the listener — interpretation is everything.

#4:  It is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going.  [q. from Werner Erhard]

#5: In the short run nothing changes; in the long run everything changes. [q. from Fred Brooks?]

#6: It is possible for things to get worse without limit. [q. from Herb (Herbert R.J.) Grosch, NBS

 

46: The Village Idiot

In Slavoj Zizek’s new book, Violence, he refers to a character in Shyamalan’s The Village as “the village idiot”. It takes a great deal of courage these days to use a word like ‘idiot’ in its now-literal sense **. Indeed, the plain sense has been almost entirely eclipsed by a variety of figurative senses — leaving no actual idiots left on the planet. Would that it were so!

** Not the same as the original Greek, which meant someone not involved in public life.

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45: “The Man with the Cinch Up”: Found Poem – III

The following appeared in two consecutive junk mail pieces I received yesterday. They seem to have something to do with Zola; or perhaps not.

============================

world criisis

Behind him and the door. So long as he did not at the background of grimy warehouses and leaden whispered words came so softly that they were by my side. (they are sitting thus when the hatch and a wretched and insane expedition is this.

worlld crisis

With its whitewashed stone houses huddled close written on the astrolabe, and they all agree that looking round for the man who had a cinch up on and the fortune of the rougons so you potter his state would not remain in this confederacy.

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44: Word Division, and How to Carve

Meat should be cut at the joint, Plato said, not merely hacked apart any old place. Likewise, words, if they must be divided, should be cut at their own joints. The pieces (before and after line-breaks) should bear as much meaning as possible, as an aid to the reader.

In violation of this principle, the Washington Post, last year, divided “homerun” as ho/merun. Exactly what’s wrong here? There is home plate, and runners run there. But baseball does not have a “ho”-anything, nor does anyone “merun”. (In a way, the Post brought this problem on themselves by ramming “home” and “run” together, instead of leaving them as two separate words, but that’s a different topic; see post #61.)

The Post also insists on dividing “England” as En/gland, as if England were not a land, but some kind of gland, ductless perhaps, or duke-less as Labour would like to see it.

The New Yorker, which generally has the most astute editing of any American magazine, recently published a long article about psychopaths, with these word divisions:

psycho/path

psycho/pathology

psychop/athy

The first two are fine: “psych” (psyche) = mind or soul, and “path”, referring to the passions (stuff that happens to us), is a Greek root taken over into Latin. (The “o” could fall on either side of the word division.)

But what is a “psychop”? And what is “athy”? Nothing. And Nothing.

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43: Sea Change, Dream, and Other Weary Cliches

“Sea change” was original with Shakespeare. But now, every newspaper in the country, and most of the talking heads on TV, use/abuse this weary cliche. Let’s leave this one with Shakespeare; may it be interred with his bones.

I had a dream, or I have a dream? King’s rhetoric played with this ambiguity, brilliantly. But now everybody seems to ‘have a dream’. In retrospect, this cheapens King’s brilliance. ‘Dream’, unless used literally, is another cliche that obstructs clear thought and should be banished from our writing.

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