THE STATE OF CRITICISM
393
was tha t we rea ll y a re very earl y in the game in talking about ma ny
of the things tha t a re happening now and tha t we' re hav ing a grea t
dea l o f trouble in critica l discourse in deciding wha t the issues a re
and wha t we sho uld be ta lking a bo ul. For example,
I'll
cite three
instances in recent criticism . You a ll know the famous book, Susan
Sontag's
Again st Interpretat ion .
Well, she writes against interpre ta–
tion. Geoffrey H artman in
The Fate of R eading
sa id if he had his
way he wouldn 't have used-tha t' s a book o f about three yea rs ago,
four yea rs ago-tha t title. He wo uld have u sed the title
For In terpre–
tat ion.
Jo na than Cullers's essay of about three or four years ago is
called "Beyond Interpreta tion ." ow are they a ll ta lking about the
same thing? Does the wo rd " interpre ta tion " mean the same thing to
those three critics? I think no lo And in a number o f places in William
Phillips's pa per I felt tha t he was ma king statements about wha t was
going on in contempo ra ry criticism which would
be
strong ly
contes ted, not only by the partisans but perhaps by people who
were foll owing it and who wo uld not necessaril y be structuralist
partisa ns.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: Can you a nd I agree on the meaning o f the word
" interp reta ti on "?
LAWRENCE GRAVER: Well, I understa nd the word " interpreta tion " to
mean to cla rify the meaning of some thing. Tha t's my bas ic defini–
tion.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: Tha t's the popula r meaning, but it a lso des igna tes
a certa in kind o f textua l ana lys is or exegesis .
LAWRENCE GRAVER: A number of these ques tions I hones tl y can 't
address beca use I don ' t know enough about structura list pos itions,
and this afternoon we' re go ing to hear a lo t more a bout this. But I
do think , if you agree, tha t one of the cha racteristics o f the critical
scene is tha t everything seems to
be
contes ted , and not-I would
argue-by luna tics, o r by faddish foo ls, a lthough you would
disagree with me on tha t, but by critics o f considera ble intelligence
and accomplishment, however we eventuall y ra te Bloom a nd
Barthes. But the iss ue o f the contes ting of the principles is one of the
charac teri stics of the critical scene tha t I find most dominanl. I feel
tha t on some of these iss ues it's too earl y
to
say definitely one way or
the o ther tha t thi s critical sys tem is bankrupt or this critical system
will lead to sterility or barrenness. For example, I think tha t if we
were sitting here in 1932 and di scussing New Criticism a t tha t point,
it would have been very hard to say anything predictive about il.
WI LLI AM PHILLIPS: Some o f us did. We sa id certain things a bout it
and some o f them even happened
to
be true!
