From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Spoilers - more
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 20:26:02 GMT

msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris) writes:

Keith, _Moby Dick_ would be an example for me where I'd think
knowing any plot detail would be utterly irrelevant. People tell me
they do read it as a whaling adventure story. And it may be that I
just came to it much too late in life ever to experience that.
Maybe I've thereby missed something. But, when I did read it, for
me _Moby Dick_ had precisely nothing to do with whaling or
high-seas adventure. Instead, it was about telling God He's
a dirty bastard to His unveiled face. And I cannot imagine anything
more thrilling than the experience of reading about that.
  
Perhaps I can think of a personal counterexample in ``The
Chronicles of Narnia''. I read this for the first time maybe 6
years ago (in my mid-20s) and found the Christian allegorizing so
tedious that I found myself intoning Tolkien's line about detesting
allegory in all of its manifestations. Friends have told me on the
other hand that they read it as children, didn't have a clue then
about the allegory, and loved the books.

KM:
     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.

MM:
You seem to imagine, Keith, that there is an imaginable state of
``first-time reader'' for any given book, with an ideal mixture
of both foreknowledge and ignorance about that book and its subject
matter that can be prescribed.

Why should virginity be preferred to knowledge?

Also, is there ever a state of true virginity? I mean
we've seen some examples where our knowledge of the story
goes way, way back (if not to mother's milk, then to Bugs Bunny
cartoons). I would contend that certain story lines just are
better than others. That we know this almost from birth. That they
just resonate with our brain better. So, I think, in some sense we
already know *all* the good stories already. The plot can't
surprise us as much as the artistry with which it is told.

KM:
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.

MM:
And, besides our own experience (being a parent, having once
been in love, etc.) history intervenes so that in some sense
we can *never* read the work as intended. For example,
it's pretty impossible to unremember the successful outcome
of the American Revolution for a reading of _Common Sense_.
Even if we deliberately avoid the Introduction and the Notes,
the book is necessarily different for us now than it was then.

KM:
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?


MM:
I think there's no such thing as an uninterpreted reading, no
such thing as an un-preconceived reading.

KM:
Perhaps this is the goal to strive for, to encounter the author in
a naive sense.

MM:
Regarding Mark Taranto's example of a prof giving away the ending
of Anna Karenina_, Keith writes:
  A perfect example. Theoretical agreement still can't stamp out
the emotional gut-feeling that something is wrong when choices are
taken away.

Again, I would have said that the fact she jumps in front of a
train was ``in the air''. I've never read the book, and I don't
know wherefrom I know that (and how) she kills herself, but knowing
it doesn't stop me from desiring to read the book, doesn't make me
feel cheated.

KM:
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. 
  
MM:
I had said: 
     I'm definitely not one to argue authorial intent with you, but
     I guess I'm also not convinced that one-time surprise was
     essential to, say, Eliot's intent.

KM:
I think that this idea of "surprise" is really getting in the way
of my point. More on this below.
  
MM:
(See, again I regard more knowledge as an unmixed *good*.) 

KM:
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 an
mixed blessing. 

KM:
However, as to the Eliot example, my comment is that this is not a
surprise that is revealed, it is that in revising the manuscript
for  publication (it had appeared in Cornhill's magazine
previously) Eliot deleted a line so as to make certain actions
ambiguous. She did that so the story would proceed in a certain
way. 

MM:
But, I think the story *does* proceed in this certain way, with or
without the offending footnote. The footnote just lets me peek
behind the curtain a little to admire the intent and execution a
little more than I would have. Again, maybe I just don't surrender
myself enough to the story, I keep always some critical distance so
that part of my brain objectifies the work I'm immersed in.
Probably Fiona's willed forgetting describes it best, but for me
it's only part of my brain that can do this, that experiences the
story as story. The rest of my brain craves anything the critical
apparatus can give me.  

KM:
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. 

MM:
And finally Keith wonders: 
       ... if there is a tendency to forget that, first and
foremost, these are just *stories*, that was the primal authorial
intention.   Jane Austen didn't sit down to write "literature" she
just wanted to tell stories.

MM:
*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.
              

KM:
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? It seems to me that there is a
very important dialectic between form and content in the novel. If
the form is unimportant then the author should not be telling
stories. One of the ancient philosophical questions is to ask why
Plato wrote dialogues. That is, why did he choose to present his
philosophical teaching in conversational form? I think that Plato
had two different intentions, and that the philosophy had to be
presented in conversational form in order to fulfill those
intentions. After about ten years of studying Plato I still find
him very deep and very difficult but I am convinced that no matter
how hard I search for the Platonic epistemology, for example, I
know that the form of the dialogue is as important to understanding
as the content is. Why is Socrates talking to this person and not
that one; why are they talking in this place; why don't they pursue
this topic instead of that one? All of this is part of the story,
part of the teaching, and part of the philosophy. I would say the
same about Melville: the allegories are the characters are the plot
are the teaching are the story.

There may be two levels to Plato, to Austen, to Melville and I may
never understand more than the obvious one; however, why should I
stand quietly while some jerk editor spoils my fun? If by attending
to the unspoiled story, I am charmed AND instructed so much the
better.

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? OK,
maybe I'm being naive but it seems to me that the modern world is
characterized by the necessity of revealing everything (modern
science) and by the necessity of permitting everything  (modern
philosophy). And I guess that I have too much respect for the
author to think that it doesn't matter how things turn out.       
                                                                  
--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