From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Spoilers - more
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 19:13:37 GMT

Mike Morris writes:

>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.

	Mike, you eternal optimist, well, even if the analogy is apt
(and I don't agree that it is), there is still only one FIRST time.

>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.

	What did you learn about Paine? How can you tell that it was
valuable before reading the book. Or, is it ALL valuable, which, of
course, moots any discussion?

>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.

	Yeah, but my point (oh, goody) was to question the necessity
of bringing all that critical and editorial baggage to the work in the
first place.
  
>  I think there's no such thing as an uninterpreted reading, no
>  such thing as an un-preconceived reading.

>A different goal (mine in fact) would be to load myself up with the best
>and as many preconceptions as possible.

	What's the principle here? How can you tell what's the best,
the truest, the most noble of these "preconceptions" if you "load up"
on them before you read the work?
> 
>As I've been saying, I think this gives me more per read, not less.

	And I think it just gives you more opinions, more filtering,
and more distance between you and the author.

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

	Well, it's certainly necessary once you know the ending.

>Also, knowing the ending of ``Romeo and Juliet'' never makes me feel
>that everything the lovers do is vain and pointless.

	That's because you're an incurable optimist who feels the best
is yet to come.
    
>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.

	Of course it wouldn't matter to you. I imagine that you'd be
reading the Appendix first anyway.

>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''.

	I'm far too polite to take a club to the opening you've given
me here; however, I would *gently* note that perhaps imagination and
attention have *something* to do with this. 

>  *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.

	Why, indeed, did Melville write chapters on "whiteness", on
"cetology"? Could it have any relation to the fact that one of the main
characters is "white" and a "cetacean"? But then if you don't consider
Moby Dick to be a whale, then you can hardly consider _Moby Dick_ to
be a "story". I'm  really not sure we can go any further with this, so
I'll summarize my thoughts. 

	First of all, I firmly believe that reading the "story" as
"story" won't diminish anyone's further and evermore refined
understanding of the "story". A reader can choose to go for
entertainment or to go for depth. For some of us, it might only be the
entertainment that we "get", in that case why destroy that
possibility. My "theory" of reading, quaint and unfashionable as it
is, strives to understand the author as the author understood himself.
Recapturing the sense of a novel from an earlier time is difficult,
still, I'd prefer to try to have a "conversation" with the author, not
with his epigones. Introductions and other critical comments are
merely someone's particular gloss on the text, for the first (and
maybe the last) time I'd like to listen to the author's voice. If,
when I'm finished, there are things I don't understand, then I'll seek
out a guide. 

>                   Mike Morris

--Keith

--
Keith Morgan		      | Just because your voice reaches half-
MIT Libraries                 | way around the world doesn't mean
kamorgan@athena.mit.edu	      | you are wiser than when it reached 
                              | only to the end of the bar. Ed Murrow