tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post8582142513053068496..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: Existence of the textD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-35189803604517573582009-10-19T18:39:57.483-04:002009-10-19T18:39:57.483-04:00The text?
You are right, Scott, that it may be ch...<i>The</i> text?<br /><br />You are right, Scott, that it may be chimerical. As I <a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2009/10/message-and-technique.html" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> below, “[I]t becomes less pressing to settle upon an authoritative text, reflecting the author’s ultimate intention,” if we shift our demands from the author’s technique to his message.<br /><br />You are also right that the Lish-mucked-up texts of Carver’s stories are texts in their own right. I have <a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2009/10/carver-and-authorial-intention.html" rel="nofollow">argued</a> that these texts contain nonsense or accidental meanings—textual features no more significant than <a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2009/10/genius-of-page-breaks.html" rel="nofollow">page breaks</a>, because they are not the operations of the author’s intention—which damage or destroy the stories. But even if you prefer the Lish-mucked-up versions, you need to know <i>where</i> and <i>how</i> they were mucked up, or you just cannot know the texts at all.<br /><br />What is wanted, in my opinion, are texts in which errors and confusion are identified—corrected where possible, emended only when clearly labeled as emendations—and secondhand interference is eliminated altogether. Although we can never achieve that ideal with Shakespeare, that is the ideal that orients every effort to edit Shakespeare.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-70160370475030575372009-10-19T17:48:28.192-04:002009-10-19T17:48:28.192-04:00This is an interesting line of thought you've ...This is an interesting line of thought you've been pursuing lately. But I wonder if, in some cases, the idea of a text which is <i>the</i> text is meaningful. We do not, for example, have a Shakespeare-approved text of "Hamlet." Yet theater-goers, who invariably experience an edited version of the play, have been presented with <i>a</i> text of some kind.<br /><br />Is not one of Lish's versions of Chandler <i>a</i> text of its own, even if it's not <i>Chandler's</i> text? Readers have been experiencing something all these years when they read Chandler and when they watch Shakespeare. Have they been reading/watching non-texts?<br /><br />Perhaps this question is more easily answered in the case of Chandler, where comparisons can be made between what he wrote and what Lish changed. But in cases like Shakespeare, where an authentic text is impossible to locate, do we throw up our hands and declare that it's impossible to get anything from "Hamlet" because we have no idea what the Bard actually wrote for us?<br /><br />Or am I missing your point?scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.com