[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Glice

See, it's this kind of aggressive return to the vernacular of orthodoxy ('proof') that makes me not want to engage. I've not read Marquez (well, I have, but I thought it was shit and disregarded it) but you've essentially asked for a proof without interpretation; I can't seriously engage in literature that way, and I don't see how anyone can. Verification in suchfriends... case of his interpretation would require the sort of academic footnoting that renders academia un-readable to most; you've both read the book, he has this take, you have the other, but you've been excessively aggressive in asking him to qualify that. You're asking him to bore you so you can say it's boring.



'The book should be a flat surface, empirical, read and never questioned'. How do we enjoy books? Not by a hegemony of experience, but by interpretation. Ok, interpreting Hardy as proto-Zapitista would be well off-mark, but there's a necessity for ambiguity (and thus interpretation) in any given engagement with a text.




Reading comes first, but how do we share books? In silence? In stolid regurgitation? How to we discuss them? I don't see how you're leaving any space whatsoever for discussion of literature.

interesting points but misleading, especially when you question my motives ("You're asking him to bore you so you can say it's boring. "). wrong.

the other misleading misreading is about my verbal conduct, my alleged aggression-- i'm not singling him out and i am making no personal attacks, though i tend to favor the polemic style of argumentation.

by the way, speaking of misleading/misreading, i really like suchfriends, and just because i argue in a certain way it does not mean i do not have good will towards him-- actually, i argue with him like i argue with my best friends-- bluntly and without fear and calling it like i see it, because there's trust that there is an attempt to understand, in both parts. he doesn't need me to pat him in the back and prop his self-esteem. and i also wish to do a good deed by sparing him the purgatory of interpretative reading, that fucking lead chain around literature's throat.

i will answer your more technical points later because i need time to write a response, and to compile a short catalog of the non-interpretational pleasures of reading (which are infinite) as a part of that response, but i have a motherfucking deadline with a video edit and i can't engage fully in this discussion because i need all my powers for the other thing, and i was reading that bolaño letter which was brilliant so that took the time. but later, i promise.