Pound vs. Eliot

[milo]

So let's look at the idea of "the lying writer." Let's say that an author has done such a good job of concealing the truth about him/herself in his work, i.e., it points entirely away from anything that would help us to pin him or her down as in any biographical, historical, or psychological respect. So we can't tell if an author was sad, ugly, boring, a murderer, an Englishmen, alive during the Victorian era, a lesbian, etc. Pick any one of a number of these psychophysical attributes. First, we can say that even with the most disciplined writer, this is going to be difficult to do. (That Shakespeare was homosexual, for instance, may be debated, but a number of his poems seem to establish emphatically that he was).

Now, let's say that a given that author has done this with 100% success. What does this tell us about him or her?

This is all I've been trying to say to you. That someone has written something or said something at all can be used to adduce or infer something about him or her, personally, as much as the conceptual/descriptive content of his or her writing. So indeed, if you can see the lying writer behind the text, the fact that you see him as a liar shows me that you know something, however minimal, about him/her.

I wish I could remember the name of the logic error where you use observation of phenomena to prove causation. (possibly 'ipso facto" error)

Yes, much of Shakespeare's writing includes the POV of a homosexual and yet there is no historical evidence of him being a homosexual. Well, if you take your hypothesis of an author's writing always referring back to the author themselves, Shakespeare was, ipso facto, a homosexual!! You could accept that writers simply have the ability to write as different personas (what you call "lying" and everyone else in the world calls "writing") but no, you take this as proof both of your theory (an author's writing reveals the author) and as proof of Shakespeare's homosexuality.

Apologism at its best!

I have written many works from the POV of homosexual, sociopath, female, I shudder to think what this "proves" about me!

Milo,

Thanks for joining in.

Please note that I never claimed that "an author's writing always refers back to the author himself." That is an extremely strong (and stupid) claim. We need to distinguish carefully between sense and reference. "Sometimes" refers would be better, but always gives at least a sense of what the writer was about, yes, that's my position.

If that seems so terribly controversial, let me try and re-state it again. What I'm trying to say is that we can get a sense, and perhaps even a privileged one, of who a writer was through his/her writing. Perhaps even a sense of what he really thought or believed that is more accurate and revealing than any directly biographical or autobiographical account. Otherwise, bits and pieces of understanding that lend themselves to us knowing things about the author that he even didn't quite understanding about him/herself. Literature can lend itself as a conduit for an otherwise secretive soul, as much as one to a soul's hidden secrets. Why else do writers use pen names, after all? Every willful concealing is at the same time, particularly to the careful eye, also a revealing, whether consciously intended or not.

Note that I did not say that Shakespeare's writing "proved" he was homosexual, but rather that some of it seems to establish emphatically that he was. Certain of his sonnets, when read and paired with certain biographical information, have lead more than one respectable scholar to this conclusion.

the difference between establish and prove is nothing. The only thing it really establishes is that he could write from different POV's

It is true, there is nothing radical, controversial or even particularly intersting being presented here, the confessional movement seemed to establish to every literary analyst that writers only write about themselves and scads of "details" have been posthunously uncovered about authors (all unsupported by actual evidence, by why dwell on that?)

Of course we should also disregard the track record of success for this practice, let's rewrite history through apologism!

Mostly, I find the practice a combination of pop-culture fanboi-ism and smug "kill your heroes" satisfaction that draws small minds away from the literature toward neo-con culture star watching. I also find it pretty distasteful and mostly utter bollocks.