J. H. Prynne

[luka]

I haven't read the Sontag but you must be misinterpreting it surely?

 

[luka]

I can't see why interpretation is undesirable and I certainly can't imagine any artist expecting or wanting you to be inert in the face of their work, like a load of sausage meat. What good would that do? And how on earth is it possible? We don't have control of our responses. They're largely automatic.

 

[version]

She starts off discussing how art has had to justify itself since Plato. I'm trying to understand how it operated before that when she claims it didn't have to.

 

[linebaugh]

I dont think you can get past interpretation. What I took from Against Interpretation wasn't that you should approach art like an unblinking insect but that 1) there's a crisis of interpretation that disregards the actual work itself and instead treats it as a collection of meaningless artifacts to be mapped onto, say, the oedipus complex and 2) there is art being made directly in response to that mode of interpretation that seems to disregard its own content to justify itself- who likes insecure art? Sontag talks about a marriage of content and form in that essay- if art suggests certain interpretation it shouldn't be completely amputated from the actual feeling of experiencing the art, they should be connected in cybernetic loop. I think a guy like Pynchon embodies that to a T. Difference between what he's doing and name dropping

 

[luka]

well I dunno, maybe it's too clever for me. Can't see the point myself

 

[version]

When I started reading To Pollen and mentioning Hellraiser and World War I, was that interpretation or was that what it was doing to me?

 

[linebaugh]

Maybe the question is does mentioning Hellraiser and World War 1 make you want to do more things to the poem

 

[luka]

Ummmm, both

 

[luka]

Taking note of what it does to you is part of the process of interpretation, if you can be reasonably sure they are not private associations peculiar to you

 

[linebaugh]

When I was reading The Recognitions I thought the majority of the references were dead ends and it made me less inclined to chase the other obvious winks and nods down the rabbit hole

 

[luka]

With Prynne (and Pound) the reading he wants you to do outside of the text, to complete the text, isn't about solving the text as puzzle, not to provide a key to a locked room, but more, I think, because it's good for you, like eating your greens. It's good to know stuff.

 

[version]

Where do the two of you stand on 'death of the author'?

 

[linebaugh]

I'm thinking about the Neitzche hamburger here. The interpretation, the parsing through, is Nietzsche

 

[version]

With Prynne (and Pound) the reading he wants you to do outside of the text, to complete the text, isn't about solving the text as puzzle, not to provide a key to a locked room, but more, I think, because it's good for you, like eating your greens. It's good to know stuff.

What's the distinction between completing and solving?

 

[linebaugh]

Where do the two of you stand on 'death of the author'?

damn that does kinda fuck me all up about this

 

[luka]

Where do the two of you stand on 'death of the author'?

what's it mean again please?

 

[linebaugh]

What's the distinction between completing and solving?

solving is a game, completing is an experience

 

[version]

what's it mean again please?

That authorial intention isn't relevant. It's about what you get out of it.

 

[version]

solving is a game, completing is an experience

Do you not experience a game?

 

[luka]

Completing was a poor choice of word. I just meant to say that they are poems which are designed to connect to the world at large and to interact with them, and that reading outside of their boundaries is part of the process of reading them. But that reading won't solve the poems because the poems aren't riddles.