It's all open to interpretation, or is it?

A friend who held a PhD in comparative literature once told me a writer is the worst person to analyze his own writing. We were arguing over a passage in a book in which I took what the writer wrote literally and he said it was a metaphor for something else. In my mind if someone came up with an interpretation other than what the author meant, indicated the writer had failed.

In a story about Ernest Hemingway a critic asked him how much he used symbolism in his work and the great author told him something like "I must use a lot because you people keep finding it in there."

Somehow through my early education I missed the interpretation part of reading literature. I read everything and took it literally.  Holden Caulfield actually envisioned himself catching children running through the rye grass before they ran over the cliff. The grass, the children, the cliff. He saw himself protecting them as later in the book he tried to protect his sister from seeing all the "fuck yous" written on all the walls.

It came as a complete surprise in college when literature instructors started opening the doors to interpretation and teaching us what the writer really meant by what they wrote. At  first I found it interesting and challenging but in time I came to resent it. Who were these instructors, the epitome of that saying about those who can't do teach trying to tell us what a writer meant by something or other. I remember sitting in classes wondering how in the hell a teacher came up with that. Without thinking much about it, I mentally rejected the whole concept and didn't do well in literature classes after that. What there was to learn from these classes was craft, art, how and why authors said this or that in a particular way, word choices, sentence construction, transition, point of view.

Now having been on both sides of the argument, I can see the truth in the meme attached to this post. I mostly write what I mean in large part because I have seen even the simplest metaphor go right over the heads of readers. I have also seen symbolism slide right by without the slightest notice. Sometimes I wonder if it is because people don't give me enough credit as a writer to offer up a symbol or at times it just goes past them without notice of the craft involved, all the time fearing that devastating classification as a "story teller" instead of a writer.

I'm not sure which of the two I prefer. Telling a good story that keeps people involved can be as much of an art form as writing a convoluted novel loaded with symbolism and sustained metaphors. Of the authors I have read I draw the line at William Faulkner. Any more wordy than that and to my mind it is just an author showing off what he feels is his or her superior intellect. Attacking a complex subject and making it understandable to everyone is a much better goal.

Years ago I worked at a newspaper that every day seemed to be half full of reviews, books, plays, movies, live shows; I used to swear if a street mime did a back flip we would have had a reviewer there writing about how he should have done it. In time I developed a chart of progression for critics. At first they write for the potential viewer, making a case for or against taking their time to see or listen to the subject. As the critic progresses, the next step is writing for the authors or the actors or the painters with a lot of advice on what they should have done. Following that the writing becomes aimed at other critics, writing in competition with contemporaries seeking out original and better ways to say what all the other lesser critics have been saying. One day in an interchange with one of the paper's critics I realized what the epitome of the genre was. He had written a rather long, convoluted sentence from which I had to look up seven words in the dictionary. Seven words in one sentence. When I finally had everything defined and understood, it turned out the sentence made no sense at all. I asked him to rewrite it to make it clearer.  When asked why I told him in the final analysis the sentence makes no sense. He looked at me and said, "makes sense to me," and that was that. It was then I realized the top critics write only for themselves.

I wonder if some of the great authors don't go through a similar progression. I remember the battles between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. I liked them both. Plus in writing what only they understand, they challenge those who interpret their writing to come up with some kind of understanding when there is none. Think how many professors have made their living trying to interpret James Joyce's "Ulysses." It keeps legions of literature instructors, who seldom write anything worthwhile themselves, employed.

An example of what I find in reading other authors incidentally comes from Norman Mailer – how to use adjectives. He always had a writing lesson or two in his books and one from "Tough Guys Don't Dance" stuck with me. He wrote something like "if I write a strong man walked into the room that is going to mean different things to different people. But if I say a man walked into the room, picked up a solid oak chair in one hand then with the other tore it into two pieces, you know something about how strong he is." I often use the difference in the meaning of "cold" to someone in California and someone in Alaska as an example of the need for specific adjective, but I learned that from Mailer.

I learned about human sensitivity from John Irving. He, in talking with a TV interviewer about "Cider House Rules," said I like to find someone portrayed in the news as despicable and give him humanity. If the protagonist in "Cider Rules had been a headline in the New York Daily News it would have read "Ether-addicted abortionist commits suicide."

But is the ether-addicted abortionist a symbol for god as an ultimate judge, doing the lord's work and the devil's work or is he simply a doctor who takes in unwed pregnant women and serves them as they wish? I prefer the latter. As I also prefer the gangster who when challenged to dance by heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, tells him "tough guys don't dance." Going back to Mailer and adjectives, that one does the trick. And I wished I also could have scrubbed all the profanities off all the walls so my sister and later my children would not have to see them.

I realize not everyone reads the way I do, analyzing craft along the way, but these lessons are asides in otherwise riveting stories, deftly mixed into the narrative.

And then there is this about interpretation. Read any way you want to. Don't let a teacher  or a parent or a critic or even me tell you what something means, or what you are supposed to think after you read something. What's important  is what it means to you, the reader. What ever you draw from what you have read is all that matters at least when you are reading for enjoyment or enlightenment. (In other words not counting textbooks or scientific papers.) If what you take from a book is what the author intended then he or she has done the job correctly. 

Now the question, if you have read "Keep the Round Side Down," what do you think the killer whales symbolize? Hint: They are never referred to as "orca" in the book, only the boy is.

Comments from facebook: Betty Sederquist Tim, when you were mentoring me as a writer, you didn't put up with any flowery BS from me in my writing. Lessons well learned, and now I know the origin of all that, those miserable literature classes. I would have majored in English, but found all those flowery metaphors in the classes a bit too daunting. I'm with Hemingway on this one. Interestingly, I think you and I have published WAY more than any of those English professors.

Jan Williams Simone Aw, I like a good metaphor once in awhile, not that I can come up with an example. But you two are my writing mentors. Even though I was not on the editorial side at ANWP, I picked up a lot from both of you. Every time I use an exclamation point here on FB I still can hear Tim's voice in my head saying (exclaiming?) to avoid them. If I were writing a blog or something more formal, they would be edited out. I wish I could go back and work there again, now that I have enough life experience to have something to say..