From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Spoilers - more
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 21:15:46 GMT

Mike Morris writes:
>Finally, I am in agreement with your summary, Keith, that a reader should
>be allowed to (try to) experience what the author intended as first-hand
>as he thinks he can. I would also agree that it is a fine thing to read
>for ``the story'' and no one should be denigrated for choosing to do so,
>or denied the option.
>
>(Though, as I've been arguing, I don't believe that ``the story''
>and ``what the author intended'' are necessarily the same thing.)

>                   Mike Morris

This discussion began with my lamenting that editors allow the plot of
a novel to be spoiled for the reader in various ways. You initially
responded that if a novel is really any good, it will have a depth to
it that knowing the ending will do nothing to spoil. Yes. But I was
not discussing the depths of a novel--rather only its story
(regardless of whether it has any depth at all). In attempting to
persuade me along your lines, you have gone so far as to claim that the
story and what the author intended may not necessarily be the same
thing. Let us then discuss works in regard to their multiple levels.   

Of course the story is what the author intended. He had something to
say and he *chose* to do so in the form of a story. You seem to think
that I don't believe there may be levels beneath the story line. Of
course there are--that's what makes great books worth reading a second
and third time. The point is that the book is also worth reading the
first time. No one is trying to deny you the depth of your reading,
but by the same token, I do not want to be denied that first unspoiled
reading: I want to be able to do both. That is what *I* consider to be
getting the most out of a great book.

1. It is criminal to spoil the simple enjoyment of allowing the story
to unfold the way the author originally intended.

2. If it is indeed a great book, the story will never simply be a
throw away. In order fully to understand the underlying messages in
the book, it will be necessary constantly to compare the depths of the
book with its surface. Those messages can only be illuminated in the
light of the story line that has structured their presentation.
Consequently, it is necessary first to get the story right--the way
the author intended the reader to get it.

3. There is no shortcut to this process. Reading everything one can
about the book prior to reading the work itself is no substitute for
doing the legwork of various comparative readings oneself. At best,
one ends up with a bunch of opinions about a work and no genuine
understanding of it. It's fine to read that stuff afterward, but if
you read it beforehand, it really just gets in between you and the
author.    

In short: a great work has a surface and a depth. No matter how
profound the depth may be, I would prefer to get the surface enjoyment
out of it as well. I want them both. The work is diminished if one is
sacrificed for the other.

Finally, as you cited the _Oxford Companion to American Literature_ in
support of your position, let me cite a comment of Robert Alter's
in support of mine:

	To read [the language of literature] adequately requires a
	prehensile activity of the mind on the details of the text as
	it unfolds, a willingness to entertain multiple and unresolved
	meanings, an openness to the pleasures in the sound and look
	and combination of the words.... there is a necessary, if
	subordinate, place for literary studies alongside reading.
	Analytic attention to the distinctive formal resources of
	literature is never a substitute for the immediate experience
	of reading, but it can give us a sharper focus on the dyanamic
	play of elements in what we read. 
	
	_The pleasures of reading in an ideological age._
	Simon and Schuster, 1989, p.48.

--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
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