From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: excellent reading!
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 22:48:34 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.175604.2355@inel.gov> gj1@inel.gov writes:
>[a bit of friction & debate deleted]
>
>To get back to the issue of the book _The Education of Little Tree_.
>I have not read the book, but my wife has - she recommended it unreservedly.
>The other night I related the bit I saw in this group about the KKK, nazis, 
>non-PC, etc., and asked her if she got a whiff of these tendencies in the
>book. Her answer was no. What gives? Given the subject matter, it appears
>a long way from all those nasty fascisits.

	I have not read the book in question myself, and my only interest
in it to this point has been theoretical.  That is, I take it that the book
represents (1) a fraud--as it purports to be the product of one person
and is in fact the product of another, (2) an embarrassment--as the person
who in fact wrote it has connections which are considered horrifying and
uncivilized by most everyone, (3) a convenient talking point for several
literary questions of some interest to critics--on which, more below.

	As to (1), literary history abounds with frauds--notable instances
in English literature are Chatterton's and the Reverend Macpherson's fakeries
(the "Ossian" poems, which were warmly endorsed by Blake, among others).  
Like faked paintings, literary fakes tend to fade in interest quite rapidly
with the passage of time--they embody all too accurately the way an artist's
work is seen at a particular historical moment. In the literary instance
under discussion, I suspect that the writer's fakery will reveal itself as 
a sentimentalized view of the Native American peculiar to the late 20th 
century in America.

	As to (2), the embarrassment has resonances with the
case of Paul de Man.  Also, the issue has particular sharpness here, given
that the text in question seems to be presented as interesting at least
partly because its purported author brings a special authenticity to the
story's telling, also given that the moral disjunction between virtuous Native
American and KKK member/Nazi is oh *large*.

	And as to (3):

	Questions about the standing of the author of a text suffuse modern
criticism; these include to what extent, if any, the author should be
considered an authority on what the text means and the extent to which the
facts of the author's life should be considered relevant in construing the
text.

	So far as I know, no consensus on these questions is likely to 
emerge any time soon.  Often, people who hold one set of beliefs about
them simply find the opposing beliefs not only wrong but absurd.

	My original remark--which concerned who would break the news to the
lover of _The Education of Little Tree_--alluded to the confusion,
frustration, etc. the original recommender of the book would likely feel
when told the Bad News (isn't it a Brecht poem which says that he who laughs
has not yet been told the bad news?).  

	

	
-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books