Asimov And The Critic

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Re: "I don't see support for the notion that "WikiIsNotYourNotebook isn't about halfbaked ideas". Look at the content of that page again; nothing contradicts this usage. That may not be how you thought of that badge before, but it nonetheless applies here. -- DM

Oh dear. The thing is, I wrote that page, and that is not at all what I had in mind. I guess I need to make it less ambiguous? Well, on reading it again, I can't see how it does apply to halfbaked ideas. Would you like to fix it? -- EM

I don't think it necessarily needs fixing, but it should apply to half-baked ideas as much as anything. I'm reminded of a comment Asimov made in one of his books, that someone on the web paraphrased:

• Asimov came upon a group of fans at a convention. A man was speaking to them at length about one of Asimov's stories going on and on about subtext and allegories and ... so forth.
• Asimov cuts in and points out that it's simply a story about (whatever the tale was).
• The speaker tut-tuts him and explains how it may SEEM so on the surface but, if one goes between the lines, one can find a richness and depth to the story which would be unsuspected to the untrained reader.
• Asimov retorted that the Speaker was full of it. It was a simple, straightforward story about [...] nothing more.
• Speaker: Sir, I am an English professor who has been teaching literature for years. What makes you think you know more about it than I?
• Asimov: Because I, sir, am the story's author.
• Speaker: So? Just because you wrote it, what makes you think you know anything about it?

:-) Both Asimov and the professor are correct, of course.

Great story! It ought to be moved somewhere appropriate, like PostModernism, PostModernLiteraryCriticism, or DeconstructAlmostAnything. -- IanOsgood

The professor may be right in that Isaac may be guided by a subconscious mind that he himself did not realise, or barred by some mental block. -- dl

Yes, that sort of thing is certainly possible, but the bigger point is that words must stand on their own, quite regardless of what the author thinks they mean. After all, how can he correct a misimpression? With more words. But what if those are also misunderstood? This goes into an infinite loop, thus reductio ad absurdum, and logic therefore dictates that not even a single meta-explanation is required, nor even so much as permitted, really, since that's what begins the infinite recursion. (I'm exaggerating, of course; no one is forcibly restraining authors from speaking their mind.)

And if we need the author's explanation to understand his words, then we're out of luck with those authors who never explain their writings (e.g. the majority of dead authors never did).

Thus the modern (or post-modern or ...) theory that the author holds no special position of authority on his own writings; any (sufficiently skilled) reader is on equal ground with the author in interpreting the author's words, and in fact may actually be more expert than the author at such interpretation. And in any case, any analysis the author offers is merely one more data point, not something especially authoritative.

Then again, one of the reasons that the story sounds silly is that most readers are casual readers, not English professors, and who are untrained in literary analysis, and most in fact don't spend all that much thought on the novels they read, in which case the author may in fact have spent vastly more time thinking about the topics and about the wordings etc. The story is told in a way that implies all that as a matter of common sense, which makes it drolly amusing and sympathetic (for most people) to Asimov.

If the professor were the one who told the story, he doubtless could have given it a spin to make Asimov sound highly naive about his own writings (Asimov, after all, never studied literary analysis). -- DougMerritt

Yeah! What does a trained monkey at a typewriter know about his own writing anyway? ^_^

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CategoryStory