Sidebar: Notes on Reading, No. 1

Or, intent versus consent

In legal terms, a sidebar is a discussion that occurs in a law court between the lawyers and the judge held out of earshot of the jury; in journalism, a sidebar is a short article placed alongside a main article, containing additional or explanatory material; but to my mind, a sidebar is also a small bar off from the main bar where a small group can sit over a quiet drink and converse, away from the din of the crowd. These sidebar pieces – for paying subscribers and special guests, my judges – are a combination of all three.

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1.

I’ve long held the distinction – in my own head, at least, as a sort of critical rule of thumb – between two modes of reading, two ways of approaching a written work, which I call reading with intent and reading with consent. Although I consider the former to be a corrupted form of reading, there is a modified form of this mode, which offers it some redemption, which I will consider at the end of this discussion.

By reading with intent I mean approaching a work with a preconceived notion, with the purpose of confirming that notion, often regardless of what the text of the work actually says, in either part or whole. In other words, the purpose of reading with intent is to collapse whatever is unfamiliar in a work with what is already familiar to the reader.

By reading with consent I mean approaching a work without such intent, holding such preconceived notions in abeyance, or at least being able to distinguish between that notion and the text of the work itself, considering one against the other. By reading with consent I suggest that a work may very well have its own notions to impart. In other words, the purpose of reading with consent is to sit with what is unfamiliar in a work, and to consider ways it may interact – to correct, or confirm, or expand, or limit – what is already familiar to the reader.

2.

This distinction may seem obvious – and it is – but in practice it is rarely held for long. And it is because my concern is not theoretical but practical that I have to consciously make, and maintain, this distinction – in my own head, at least – whenever I approach any particular work.

In part, this is as a corrective to various bad habits that I was taught at university, many years ago, in the humanities, in which each and every work was turned into a Procrustean bed, to support whatever theory was in vogue at the time. A work was always considered an illustration of such a theory, which effectively rendered the work redundant, a useless prop.

In part, identifying – and trying to avoid, where possible – such intent is also a corrective to various personal bad habits. Such institutional practices so easily take hold because individuals are already predisposed to such intentional modes of approaching things. We can’t blame institutions for inventing such habits – institutions are, after all, created and maintained by individuals – but we can hold them responsible for continuing such habits, and for providing theoretical rationales to propagate them. But we should always hold ourselves ultimately responsible.

We have already considered an example of this in a recent instalment of this newsletter – in reading Albert Camus’ The Stranger in its Algerian context (part one and part two) – with regards the postcolonial reading of that novel which, to support such an intentional reading, requires that the Arab man killed by Meursault is unambiguously unnamed, without family, and without cultural background. But even a casual reading of the actual words of the novel, in the order they appear on the page, show that none of this is the case: that the man has a sister, she has a name, and it is precisely because of his family obligations, and the cultural background to this, that the narrative is constructed in the first half of the novel in the manner that it is. In choosing between the novel itself or the criticism of the novel, some readers have chosen a theory that justifies the criticism over the practice of actually reading the novel.

In a sense, reading against the grain of such intentional impositions over the work of Camus was what guided my long, circuitous series on The Plague, which I started by simply showing that there is nothing in Camus’ works, either his essays on aesthetics, or in The Plague itself, that supports, for example, those who intentionally approach the work as if it were an allegory of the German Occupation of France. 

3.

There is another, perhaps more influential example of reading with intent – at least in humanities circles – which previously occupied generations of academics and their students: Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter” (1844). So much ink has been spilled by philosophers and critics and academics over this 19th century story, much of it turning on the claim that the stolen letter has no content – is an empty signifier – and that this absence apparently structures the interactions with all the characters in the story, underpinning the narrative itself, which thereby exists beyond all materiality. In other words, the story illustrates a theory. 

And yet, in the context of the story, the contents of the stolen letter are known, and to an ever increasing circle of people. The purpose of the actions within the story is precisely to ensure that this circle doesn’t increase any further.

In the story, when the Prefect first tells Dupin, and the narrator, of the stolen letter he describes it as ‘a document of the last importance,’ that it is ‘from the nature of the document’ that may give ‘its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable’; that is, it ‘would bring in question the honour of a personage of most exalted a station.’ Already, a reader may feel safe in assuming that it is not the letter’s empty form alone that has endowed it with this significance; but rather, its contents.

The Prefect goes on to describe the scene of its theft, and in doing so, the Queen’s actions are stated clearly: ‘During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted.’ So, we may assume, the Queen had enough knowledge of the letter’s contents, after her ‘perusal’, to know that she did now want her husband, the King, to know of it. ‘The address, however, was uppermost, and, it contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice.’ But here the Minister ‘recognizes the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the [Queen], and fathoms her secret.’ The ‘secret’, of course, at this stage is not necessarily the exact contents of the letter. What the Minister notices, however, is that whatever this content may be, the Queen does not want the King to know it. Even so, at this early stage of reading the story, the impetus for this first scene is clearly not, as some would have it, because the letter is an empty signifier, as it is the Queen’s knowledge of the contents of the letter that makes her hide it from the King, and subsequently makes the Minister curious enough to steal it. 

Later, when Dupin asks the Prefect for an ‘accurate description of the letter,’ the Prefect produces ‘a memorandum-book’ and ‘proceeds to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of the external appearance of the missing document.’ Would it be safe to presume that what is meant here by the ‘internal… appearance’ of the letter is the text, and subsequently the content, of the letter that is being referred to? Any such ‘minute account’ would surely include this information. But let us not rely on this point alone.

Later, when Dupin retrieves the letter from the Minister and hands it over to the Prefect, the Prefect is said to have ‘grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house’ (emphasis added).

It is therefore safe to assume that there is explicit evidence in the text of the story to claim that not only did the Queen know of the contents of letter, but that the Prefect did also; and from this one could then assume that the contents were at some time revealed to the Minister, and even to Dupin (to facilitate its retrieval). Whatever one assumes, one could certainly not be safe in presuming that, just because we as readers of the story lack explicit knowledge of the content of letter, that the characters within the story must also share this ignorance. 

A skeptical reader may raise doubts on our assumption that the contents are known to the characters in context of the story. But this leads us to the essential point of the story: that the contents of the letter are only secondary to the power or influence given to the person who possesses the letter. This is clearly stated at the beginning of the Prefect’s story, when he says that it is known that the item is still in the Minister’s possession:

“How is this known?” asked Dupin.

“It is clearly inferred,” replied the Prefect, “from the nature of the document, and from the non-appearance of certain results which would at once arise from it passing out of the robber’s possession; - that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it.”  

“Be a little more explicit,” I said.

“Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable.”

This point is reinforced on the following page: 

“It is clear,” said I, “as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With the employment the power departs.”

In other words, it is ‘the paper’ – the material possession of which – plus the ‘contents’ of the letter, which gives the Minister his power over the Queen. By retrieving the physical letter from the Minister, relieving him of its possession, Dupin has relieved him also of his power over the Queen. Why? The Minister may repeat the contents, in the form of a verbal rumour, in order to disparage the Queen, but without the physical proof to corroborate those aspersions – which come from both the content and material existence of the letter, in support of that content – that rumour lacks the power to inflict permanent reputational damage. In other words, according to “The Purloined Letter”, the stolen letter does indeed have content, and it is this content, and its physical character in the form of the very paper it is written on, that structures the interactions with all the characters in the story, underpinning the narrative itself, which is thereby grounded in a sense of materiality.

4.

Such intentional readings proceed through deploying two tactics. The first is exploiting the notion of a sub-text separate from the text itself, and the second is that, because this sub-text is simply a reflection of the theory the critic already wants to confirm in their reading, it becomes unnecessary to read the actual text: one only has to read the criticism of the work, rather than the work itself.  

These tactics have been satirised in the early films of Whit Stillman. In Barcelona (1990), the characters Ted and Fred are discussing the idea of a sub-text, and Fred asks: “What do you call what’s above the sub-text?”

And in Metropolitan (1990) – the film itself structured by Jane Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park – there is an ongoing argument between two characters, Audrey and Tom, about the merits of that novel. Audrey finally reads the Lionel Trilling essay on Austen that Tom has been citing throughout their earlier interactions, and it is only then that she realises – and he admits – that he has never read the novel. “I don't read novels,” he says. “I prefer good literary criticism.”

5.

This mode of reading with intent becomes clearer when it is delineated by another mode of reading, which I call reading with consent. Reading with consent means considering the work as a whole, and how each part contributes to that whole; taking this as both a starting point and final measure of what the work actually says.

This is not an attempt to pin a work down to a single, inviolable meaning, however. Various interpretations can spin off from here, but this mode of reading provides the baseline that allows such readings to be performed, and more importantly, to be taken seriously – or not. Such consensual readings may, after all, confirm one’s initial notions; but more often than not, such a reading may point to the limitations of those initial notions.

Reading is an act of translation, not from one language into another, but rather from one language into the same words as used in that original language. This is not as easy as it sounds. It requires the reader to take just as much care with each word, their order, sentence upon sentence, paragraph upon paragraph, from first word to last, as if we were, in fact, rendering the work into another language.

The writing of criticism is different again, and does involve translating the words of that original work into a different order of words, almost into another language: the language of criticism. But here the onus is on the critic to demonstrate how their own work relates to the source material.   

I’ve already suggested a few examples of this, with regards to my readings of Camus’ novels, The Stranger and The Plague; but also in reading Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”. Each of these are attempts at reading with consent. The result of these attempts may very well be wrong, or be riddled with mistakes, or misunderstandings, regarding the works I have approached – in which case, I am willing to admit error and change my mind accordingly – but in order to demonstrate that, somebody would have to show where and how these readings do no tally with the source material.

And that would require a further attempt at reading with consent. 

6.

The practice of reading with consent opens up another fraught question in criticism: that of the intent of the author. In many respects, reading with consent implies consenting to the author’s intentions. I’ve already raised the question of intent in relation to the reader. Here, I’m suggesting that reading with consent involves negotiating, and keeping separate – at least, during the initial act of reading – the intentions of both reader and author.

The problem here is not that there is such a thing as a sub-text – because there isn’t: what critics call a ‘sub-text’ is simply another text (which bears the marks of their own intentions) that they place beside the text of the work (which bears the marks of the author’s intentions), with the critic claiming their own text as having precedence.  

But what I am suggesting is that reading with consent requires balancing these two intentions, which operate sort of like the two lenses in a pair of bifocals, which require us to shift one lens in relation to the other until something comes into sharper focus.

Of course, for generations now we have been told that the intentions of the author are moot. But this ignores a number of basic points.

First, the intentions of the author are not prior to or separate from, or otherwise hidden beneath, a work. It is the work itself, the words on the page, and the particular order of those words on the page, which bear the marks of the author’s intentions. Yes, there may be an extra- and pre-textual background to a particular work: motivations, personal or social causes, reasons, purposes and designs. But as any writer knows, the process of writing – which is really a process of writing and reading and rewriting, adding and subtracting words, phrases, sentences, changing, inserting, removing, and writing again and again – is a process of not only clarifying intent, but often also discovering or inventing the intent through the very process of writing. The writing ends when the work best approximates this intent. A good editor also works with an author toward the same goal. And such marks of intent are not inaccessible to a reader. In practice, this is the very thing – and the only thing – that a reader has access to when they are reading. 

Second, many of the arguments against authorial intention are really about concealing the critic’s own imported intentions, while at the same time avoiding responsibility for doing so: I’m just uncovering what is already there, in the sub-text.

Third, arguing for consenting to the marks of intention in a particular work is not a substitute for an argument for their being a single, fixed, inviolable meaning to that work. Just as the act of writing ends when an author feels the work best approximates their intent; so, too the act of reading is also approximate, and so it is always contestable. This is why the language of criticism requires argument, weighing up textual evidence, and comparing each part to the whole. This is actually what opens up and creates the field of scholarship. Such argument is based on dialogue if it is grounded in a mode of reading with consent; but it becomes an area of competing monologues when it is grounded in a mode of reading with intent, which replaces argument with assertion, and closes off the field of scholarship.

This field of scholarship also allows for additional material to be brought in, to support a particular reading of a particular work. For example, I can support my reading of The Stranger by bringing in other texts written by Camus about the sense of honour in Algeria; just as I can bring in additional works by Pierre Bourdieu or Assia Djebar. But such support material still operates under the same rules of consent.     

Finally, reading with consent provides a baseline only, from which various interpretations can spin off and be performed. More importantly, by being grounded in this mode of reading, such interpretations can therefore be taken seriously. Even when such interpretations operate beyond the intentions of the author, they can still very much be consistent with those intentions. The crucial caveat here is that, in these instances, it is the reader who is ultimately responsible for such extended readings, while at the same time being responsible for maintaining this point of consistency with the author and their work. Out on this limb we can’t take the root intentions of the author as being the only thing keeping us upright. We need to provide our own supports.

For example, long before COVID appeared in December 2019 I had been reading The Plague – and urging others to read it also – as a climate change novel. Obviously Camus, writing in the 1940s, didn’t write the novel with the question of climate change in mind, which didn’t really hit the public imagination until the 1980s and 1990s. I’m responsible for such a reading, but at the same time I can also argue that it is consistent with Camus’ concerns with human actions operating within the limits of nature, and with the plague symbol being, in part, a form of hubris regarding the human transgression of such natural limits. The initial denial of the administration in part one of the novel, and the denial of part of the township that prefers business as usual, only reinforces such a reading.      

Another example: some of you may recall the epigraph to the very first, introductory instalment of my series on The Plague; a quote from Bob Moses, from a 1964 meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in the United States. Moses is reported as saying: ‘There is an analogy to The Plague, by Camus. The country isn’t willing yet to admit it has the plague, but it pervades the whole society. We must discuss it openly and honestly... If we ignore it, it’s going to blow up in our faces.’ Moses is an interesting figure because, while most other activists during this Civil Rights period based their non-violent activism on the methods of Dr Martin Luther King Jnr. – who in turn, adapted them from Ghandi – Bob Moses was largely influenced by Albert Camus’ combination of rebellion and non-violence. His self-conscious approach organising in Mississippi in the late 1950s and early 1960s was to be ‘neither a victim nor an executioner.’ He always had a copy of The Plague or The Rebel with him so that when he was arrested (which was frequently) he would have something to read in jail. (His southern jailers would probably not have known what he these books were, because Bob Moses read Camus in the original French).

So Bob Moses was very much justified in his reading of The Plague as a novel about racism in America – again, like climate change, something that Camus was not directly concerned with – while at the same time it was a reading that is very much consistent with Camus’ own thinking and intentions. ‘I have always believed that a nation is answerable for its traitors as well as for its heroes,’ Camus said in his 1946 lecture at Columbia University, in the United States. ‘But so is a civilization, and the civilization of the white man in particular is surely as answerable for its perversions as for its glories.’    

Bob Moses is also an interesting figure for many other reasons. Read here his recent obituary in The New York Times.

6.

I said earlier that this distinction between reading with intent and reading with consent may seem obvious – and it is – but that in practice it is rarely held for long. This is not just a narrow concern of literary criticism, but it has broader political implications. How you read a book goes some way to showing how you think about the world. And I’d argue that reading with intent is the default posture of most people, especially when reading and writing about political matters, too. The purpose of such reading is almost always to collapse whatever is unfamiliar in the world with what is already familiar to the person, with regards to some ideology. They read and write about the works of others in terms of the degree to which that work violates or supports some dogma.

But reading is also an activity that can make us think, to discover something new, about ourselves and the world. I’ve long threatened to write a parallel intellectual study of Albert Camus and George Orwell – you can read an initial attempt at starting that project here – because Orwell was, first and foremost, a ‘literary intellectual’ (that was actually, from his letters, his own self-description), and that this is what made him such an important political writer (very much akin to Camus). One point I keep repeating is that Orwell’s famous essay, “Politics and the English Language” was written at the same time, and as a sequel to, the more fundamental essay, “The Prevention of Literature”. His allergy to political dogma derived from his literary sensibilities. What makes his early book-length essays, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Homage to Catalonia (1938), so perceptive, idiosyncratic, and resistant to ideology, is because in the 1930s the two most influential writers – which he read with consent – and which, in turn, enabled him to think and approach the world with consent – was James Joyce – especially the novel, Ulysses (1922) – and Henry Miller – especially the novel, Tropic of Cancer (1934). What he got from reading Joyce was the ability to articulate the interior life of an ordinary man (Leopold Bloom), and what he got form Miller was the ability to experience exterior reality in all its particular, often unsavoury, detail. When Orwell said that the hardest thing to do is to see what is right in front of your nose, he was drawing on Henry Miller, who not only described what was in front of your nose, but rubbed your nose in it.        

7.     

There is a modified form of reading with intent, which offers this corrupted mode of reading some redemption, but which comes only after one has read a particular work with consent. If such intent is reframed as a question, rather than an assertion or imposition, then it can be used to approach a work with some effect. In this, it can actually be used to make a long familiar work once more unfamiliar and open to new approaches. One of my favourite pieces in the series on The Plague (this one) was written as an afterthought. After writing the previous instalment on the theme of nature in Camus’ work, which I was long familiar with, I asked myself a particular question with regards The Plague, which opened up the work to me in a new way.

That said, this modified form of reading with intent may give the reader a complete response, or even a partial response – which we must then complete on our own, and take responsibility for – but at the same time we must be prepared to accept that we can also approach a work with a particular intent, a specific question, and because such a reading is also grounded in our otherwise approaching that work with consent, then such a question may solicit the response: no.

As with reading, such is life.   

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What do you think? Comments open below.