interpret this!

so i'm reading this excellent book by janet brennan croft right now, "war and the works of j.r.r. tolkien", which happily combines 2 of my favorite things: tolkien and WW1/WW2.

there are a lot of really interesting connections made in this book (and a heavy reliance on the theory/interpretive awesomeness of paul fussell, which is a-okay), and there are a number of things i've read already, being about 1/4th of the way through, that i've wanted to spout off about. so you probably haven't heard the last of me on this. but. there was one thing i specifically wanted to tackle today, and it's this whole bullshit idea that somehow fiction and specifically fantasy fiction aren't worthy of serious study. i'd imagine anybody who wants to write a "serious" work about tolkien has to start with a chapter on why that's okay to do, but i don't get why. the vast majority of material considered okay for serious scholarly study/debate is fiction, and a lot of it is fantasy fiction (arthurian legends, vonnegut, borges, blah blah blah). so why the moratorium against post-1900 and specifically post-1950s fantasy fiction? i think this summation of orson scott card by way of croft sums it up well:

"[Card]...points out the paradox implicit in the postmodern concept of writing and reading 'serious' literature as a process of encoding and decoding meanings. Rather than creating a deep and resonant work, this process creates a text that is actually simple enough to be decoded by the clever-enough reader and have its one right meaning captured and pinned down. However, escapist storytelling, story told for the sake of story, requires the reader to interact with the story rather than standing aloof, and can allow a multitude of interpretations even by the same reader, rather than one 'correct' reading dictated by the author. 'Escapist' literature is 'so complex and deep it cannot be mediated, but must be experienced'. '[T]he story is not the text. Rather the text is the tool that the readers use to create the story in the only place it ever truly exists - their individual memories'".

i think card's idea that postmodern theorists attack a work with the idea of coming up with one "right" reading is a little reductionist, but the basic idea behind his complete is solid. people in my line of work are taught to look for answers in texts, and then they try to find a way to justify those answers. that's what we do. we essentially write math proofs in the form of rhetoric. and so the idea of story-for-the-sake-of-story is lost. nobody cares because just looking at a story as a good story doesn't afford you the opportunity to dig into the subtext and see what's "really" going on. i think this idea began reasonably enough, impelled by the idea that there's more to a written work than the plot: there are social, biographical, etc. concerns at work as well. but at some point investigating these outside effects became the be-all-and-end-all of critical investigation, and i think as a result stories that focused on their story became stigmatized. see, because once people start reading stories looking for "deeper" meaning, authors start writing stories meant to communicate deeper meaning. and that, folks, is generally how we decide nowadays what goes on the "literature" shelf and what goes on the "fiction" shelf. at least that's my impression.

it's hard to come across a good, solid story that isn't pretty directly trying to communicate some sort of artful subtextual trickery - of course at the expense of said good, solid story.

hmm...i was going to pontificate on this further, but i'm realizing that a) probably nobody cares but me and b) dinner's ready.

vamos!