Monday, November 15, 2004

On Misinterpretations

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction.Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.

1 comment:

Santiago said...

So glad you've chosen to continue this blog... Flannery is one of my favorite authors. Keep it up.