From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Spoilers - more
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 03:00:56 GMT


                                      Wednesday, the 22nd of July, 1992

Keith Morgan writes:
       Mike gives rational reasons why spoilers shouldn't matter. I
  still think that it does. Mike talks about loving _Moby Dick_ for
  Melville's spit in God's eye and of hating the Narnia tales for
  their tedious allegories. Conclusion seems to be: _Moby Dick_, read
  as an adult = good allegory; Narnia, read as an adult = bad
  allegory; Narnia, read as a child = no allegory.

Umm, the Narnia example was meant to add weight to your side.
It was a personal example where I think increased knowledge made the
experience worse for me than it might have been if I had been
younger and seen more behind the curtain.

I actually do not detest allegory. But I didn't like Narnia.
  
And:
  Mike's point escapes me entirely at this point. Can there ever be
  a state of pure virginity? Well, what would be a state of partial
  virginity? And why are we even comparing virginity and knowledge?
  I never suggested that we can escape the cultural mythos that
  reveals the ending of _Don Giovanni_ in, say, Bugs Bunny cartoons,
  my point is that when idiot editors trying to make literary points
  reveal crucial plot details they are robbing something from the
  reader.
  
Your thesis seems to me to be that specific knowledge can lessen our
experience of some works. Since my own experience has been *almost*
invariably that the more I know, the more I enjoy, on the whole I disagree.

I think the analogy with sex is apt because with sex there's also a
common romantic notion that the ``first time is the best''. I think this
notion is wrong, I refuse to believe the best is not yet to come.

Regarding intervening history after _Common Sense_ was written:
  I think this is somewhat peripheral to the point I was raising with
  Roger Squires. I wasn't suggesting unremembering the outcomes of
  historical events, rather that it might not be necessary to bring
  all the critical baggage to a reading of Paine that conventional
  wisdom suggests we have to do. Wouldn't a better commentary on
  Paine be reading the _Federalist_, or Jefferson, or Rousseau?
 
I learned more about Paine than I would have if I had
not read the Introduction to the Penguin edition. That means
to me that there was *more* to the book than if there hadn't been
an Introduction.

But, my point about the history was that I think that
the intervening history in this case would alter
our reading more than any thinkable editor could.
  
I said:
  I think there's no such thing as an uninterpreted reading, no
  such thing as an un-preconceived reading.
  
And Keith:
  Perhaps this is the goal to strive for, to encounter the author in
  a naive sense.

Why?

A different goal (mine in fact) would be to load myself up with the best
and as many preconceptions as possible.
 
As I've been saying, I think this gives me more per read, not less.

Regarding _Anna Karenina_, Keith writes:
  Well, I would say that you should feel cheated since, knowing the
  ending, everything she does must be seen as vain and pointless.
  That is, unless you have such an incredible sense of determinism
  that you sense Anna's fate as inevitable anyway. 

One thing that thrills me about books is when they are very, very
tight. _Crime and Punishment_ read this way for me. It was like
from the first page, every subsequent word was predetermined. _The
Idiot_ sprawled and sprawled until the last 100 pages or so, when it
all suddenly crystallized into perfect sense. It became necessary.

I figure maybe _Anna Karenina_ will be about why that jump was necessary.

Also, knowing the ending of ``Romeo and Juliet'' never makes me feel
that everything the lovers do is vain and pointless.
    
I had peremptorily asserted that knowledge is always good. Keith writes:
  I think that this, more than anything, defines the philosophical
  difference between us. On the contrary, I think that it is entirely
  possible that more knowledge can be considered, at the least, as a
  mixed blessing. 

I can only repeat that this leaven of bad with the good has almost never
my experience.
  
Keith writes, about reading a giveaway footnote in George Eliot:
  No, absolutely not. The story proceeds in this certain way only if
  you DON'T READ THE FOOTNOTE. Once you read it the story proceeds in
  another direction entirely. Once you "peek behind the curtain a
  little" you destroy the author's intention. Eliot wanted you (the
  reader) to be unsure at this point as to the progress of the tale.
  Reinstating the deleted sentence, albeit in a footnote, defies
  Eliot's wishes. And the best way you can appreciate her artistry is
  to discover the knowledge the footnote contains after seeing how
  the tale proceeded as Eliot desired. The Jane Austen example I
  mentioned earlier is, perhaps, an even better example of this. This
  is where the editor reveals the marital conclusions. At the end of
  the novel, Austen says that it didn't have to turn out the way it
  did. It could have gone another way. I take this as an affirmation
  of chance, fate, free will, fortune - whatever - the author may be
  the ultimate determinist in the final analysis; however, here, as
  the reader experiences the novel, there are possibilities, perhaps
  infinite possibilities. And to have those possibilities prematurely
  revealed strikes me as a low form of literary snobbery. 
  
Look, I actually agree with you that the editors should not
have done this, that it would have been better if they had saved
these comments for an Appendix. I just don't think it would be
very important to how *I* would read either of these books.

Again, maybe I'm an impoverished reader therefore, but there seem
to be so many counterexamples in which I do get caught up in plots
even though I know them already (very familiar stories, historical
narratives, etc.) that maybe my mind really does practise an
unconscious version of Fiona's ``willful forgetting''.

There is a sense in which I agree that peeking behind the curtain
alters everything, but another in which I think it alters nothing.
There is a sense in which the part of my mind that enjoys the story
is going to go on enjoying it regardless of what the hyper-rational
side of my brain has to say about it.

I had said: 
  *Are* they just stories?
  
  For all of ``Romeo and Juliet'', _Moby Dick_, _Anna Karenina_, Jane
  Austen, and George Eliot, I think that the ``story'' is the *least*
  important part of the reading.
  
And Keith responded: 
  Well, if the story is the least important part of the reading then
  don't we have to ask why all of these authors wrote *stories*. Why
  didn't Melville write some treatise on God and obsession; why
  didn't Austen come out with sociological observations; that is, why
  are there novels and not treatises?

I guess I don't buy that these authors wrote *stories* at all. I think
story was just one of the ingredients from which they confected these works.
Why did Melville write chapters on whiteness, on cetology, etc.? Why the
shifting styles? To me, *sometimes* a novel is story. Stephen King's _The
Stand_ is my pet example of this, but I also think the semantic content
of _The Stand_ could have been better done as a movie. I think the semantic
content of most of the works listed above could *not* be captured
in a movie.

Keith asks: 
  Mike, I remain perplexed by some of your post. Do you read stories
  to your children? Do you tell them the ending before you begin?

Well, usually I just read them from the beginning to the end, but
often the book might be, say, _The Cat in the Hat_, and it's the 5287th
read. And Xander (my 2 1/2 year old) usually prefers it that way, the
old, familiar book to a new one.
 
                   Mike Morris
           (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

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