>David, fair enough. But since you seem to be predicating your
>reception/enjoyment of a work on the "empirical veracity" of an
>author's name, do the works of Homer, or Sappho, or
>Shakespeare, or, say, the heteronyms of Pessoa also leave you
>cold?
Well, Kent, as I prefaced my last, I suspect we have to be wary here, or too
many issues will start skitting off in different directions of their own,
forming committees, proclaiming manifestos and generally insisting on their
rightness against the all-pervading errors held everywhere else, but I
wasn't predicating my responses to a work on Sure and Authentic Authorial
Signatures.
Your list I find odd - Homer or Sappho may or may not have been said
presumed persons, the truth is unknowable, in the absence of a handy time
machine with its keys left in the ignition. As for Shakespeare the evidence
for the Shakespeare plays being overwhelmingly the work of one Wm
Shakespeare, Gent. is enormous. No doubt other members of the Company
contributed elements but the signature of one hand runs through the works.
Pessoa too was a dramatist, only he chose lyric as his medium and made
himself his own stage. When Basho assumed the name Basho he was becoming a
part, a role, he wasn't though attempting to counterfeit.
Which is the problem with Yasusada. If the poems had been presented as a
fictional projection of a Hiroshima survivor they would have been entirely
different. When I look at that 1996 issue of Stand I see an example of
people being 'had'.
Anyhow, that's just touching the surface of all this, for instance, can one
truthfully draw parallels between the uses of assumed names in the Ancient
World and the present? Is it valid to see a precedent in the literary
practices of 17th and 18th century Japan and the notions of hypertextual
authors (why do people abuse that word 'hypertext' so much?)
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "KENT JOHNSON" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Hoaxes and Heteronymity interview
A very busy week, so I've only had the chance to glance quickly at
what appear to be very interesting posts sparked by my interview
announcement. Just to fire off a question/thought in response to
Dave's comment below:
David, fair enough. But since you seem to be predicating your
reception/enjoyment of a work on the "empirical veracity" of an
author's name, do the works of Homer, or Sappho, or
Shakespeare, or, say, the heteronyms of Pessoa also leave you
cold?
Ultimately, I think, the controversies around Yasusada (whose
"critical" discussion, Rebecca, by the way, has greatly increased
*since* the work's [self]exposure as a fiction) can't be separated
out from the larger habits, prejudices, expectations, etc, of the
current reading culture-- which is perhaps stating the obvious; but
I've often wondered why a similarly obvious question is not more
often entertained: What if we had a different (more sophisticated?)
reading culture, where works were commonly taken up by readers
with no automatic assumption as to their authorial provenance?
Where "real" authors and (Mikhail Epstein's term) "hyperauthors"
were understood to exist and mutually flourish, with, imagine it,
even occasional commerce between them-- though no doubt the
former always existing in much greater number than the later?
It's not an either/or question, I think. And it seems to me that in a
climate more willing to engage the presence of fictional experiment
*within* institutional categories that are today highly ossified and
shielded in the amber of ideology, that terms like "hoax," so
smugly bandied about, become more complicated.
This is rushed and sloppy, sorry, but wanted to send in a few
words.
Kent
David Bircumshaw said:
Jaan Kaplinski was mentioned the other day - now when I read his
poems
(predicated on a name they most certainly are) even through
translation I
find myself engaged by them in a way which fake Japanese poets
or useless
objects do not engage me.
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