576
PARTISAN REVIEW
for it begins by diminishing, and ends by deleting, the part pl ayed by
the author. In Fish 's later writings, we sh all see, the reader becomes the
onl y begetter not onl y of the text's meanings, but also of the author as
the intentional p roducer of a meaningful text.
Fi sh differs from other sys tema tic Newreaders in that, instead of
setting up a matrix of tran sformers- a set of revisionary terms-he
proposes a "method " or "stra tegy" whi ch is in fact a set of moves
to
be
enacted by the reader in the process of con struing a text. T hese moves
a re such as to yield meanings which are always surpri sing, and often
antitheti c to, wha t we have hitherto taken a text to mean. As the key to
his method, h e p roposes tha t we replace our u sual ques ti on whil e
reading - "What does thi s sentence (or words, ph rase, work ) mean ?" –
by what he call s " the magic ques ti on ," namely: "What does thi s
sentence do?" T h e result of this magic ques ti on , if persistentl y applied
by readers, is tha t it " transforms minds."
In all Fish 's expositions of hi s method, however, " the key word,"
as he himself remarks, " is, of course, experi ence"; and what in fact
works the transforma tive magic is hi s major premise, express and
implied, " Reading is an experience." On the common ass umption th at
the term "experi ence" can be predica ted of any perception or process of
whi ch one is aware, this assertion seems self- evident, and innocent
enough ;
it
can , however, lead to dubious consequences when posed as
the premi se from whi ch to draw phil osophical conclusions. Take, for
exampl e, one o f Fish 's favo rite sources of sentences to demonstra te hi s
method of reading, Walter Pa ter' s " Conclusion " to
Th e R enaissance.
In on e virtuoso paragraph, Pa ter begins by casuall y positing that the
perception of all "external obj ects" is an "experience," then di ssolves
the experi ence of each obj ect " in to a group of impressions," translates
thi s into " the impression of the individual in his isola tion ," and
reduces it " to a single sha rp impress ion" in a fl eeting moment , bearing
traces of " moments gone by";
to
this, he asserts, "what is real in our life
fin es itself down ." From the premi se that everything we perceive is our
experi ence, Pater has taken us headlong down the metaphysical slope
to his conclusion of a solipsism of the specious present-tha t one can
validl y assert reality onl y for one's single sense-impression in a fugiti ve
" Now !" The exampl e should make us wary about the consequences for
interpreta ti on that Fish deduces from hi s premise tha t reading is an
experience, and wha t he proposes as its immedi a te coroll ary-that " the
meaning o f an utterance . . . is the experience- a ll of it. "
One conclusion tha t Fish draws from thi s claim that meanin g is
all of a reader's experi ence (all the experience, as he qualifies it, of a
