Not to detract from them underpaying disabled people but I believe the picture is more complex than that. I used work with one Goodwill Industries to train their employees on computer repair. Most of these employees were staying in the job for 3-6 months and then moving on to more lucrative jobs. They were receiving on the job training and in some cases, job placement by Goodwill.
Yesterday I found a copy of The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone at Half Price Books and spent the evening enthralled. The beginning chapters cover the same ground in this article but she then goes on to relate these ideas with the modern media landscape. Highly recommended book and she cohosts a podcast generally about the same subject called 'On the Media' (also highly recommended by me).
This is the particular podcast[0] that quickly goes through post-revolution Haiti. Highly recommended podcast and the Haitian revolution was in particular really interesting. The author is currently in the middle of the Simon Bolivar's revolution in Venezuela.
The author is currently in the middle of the Simon Bolivar's revolution in Venezuela.
And which, I'd like to add, was helped by post-revolution Haiti, who helped Bolivar with ships, weapons and volunteers, in exchange for pushing for the abolishment of slavery.
A little late to comment on my part but all but a handful of my Venezuelan cousins have emigrated and ended up in Miami, Colombia and Argentina. And I know its not only them who have left. Venezuela has lost an entire generation of young professionals to their neighbors.
I took a similar path in education as you. It was my junior year, I was halfway through what should have been a 20ish page essay analyzing a 3 stanza poem when I began second guessing my decision. I switched majors to Political Science the following semester and found it was much easier to make arguments based on hard data rather than guessing at the artist's intentions.
Most of my colleagues in my English program went on to law school, which dovetails nicely with that analytical type of mind but as you say, endless dissection robs the work of what attracted me to it in the first place. After graduating, it took me a few years to get back into fiction (longer still to poetry).
Here's the thing... why even worry about the artist's intentions? Once she has written the piece, her involvement is over as far as I'm concerned. Personally, I adhere to the school of thinking that says the meaning of piece of art belongs entirely to the reader/viewer/listener/whatever. Now, that may not be the consensus position, but it's not exactly something I pulled out of the air either. Roland Barthes had some similar'ish thoughts, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author
All of that said, I'd also prefer to spend my time working with issues that involve hard data, as opposed to mostly subjective interpretation and heavy dependence on cultural norms, memes, etc. I love reading, but don't give a whit about academic literary criticism.
This enters into highly philosophical territory. Can meaning exist only for one person? That is, can you decide for yourself the meaning of words and if yes, what sense does it make to tell your made-up meaning to others?
I can decide for myself that "road" is a metaphor for "apple" and treat the poem as advice to make brandy from the apples that have rolled the least distance from the tree when they fell. But does that really mean anything to other people? Can you in fact discuss this interpretation, or is it so absurd as to boggle the mind and defy rational discourse?
The other thing that bothers me is, with Death of the Author, you end up with an echo chamber. You don't try to understand somebody else's idea, you're trying to make his/her words say your ideas. Which sounds absolutely counter to the very purpose of writing things down. Why would you write if people won't read what you've written? If you won't put new ideas in their head, but only become a vessel for their current thoughts?
Socrates said he didn't see the point of writing for others, given that you won't be there to tell them what your words mean. Well, someone wrote that he said, since he himself didn't write. In any case, I find these words highly prophetic.
Death of the Author doesn't mean you get to ignore everyone else, it just means you don't privilege the author's intended interpretation as the "one true meaning". You can still compare interpretations and decide one is more fitting than another, you just don't get to sidestep the debate with a quote from the author.
Frost's poem is probably a good example: Clearly it has a pervasive meaning in our culture in a way that the author didn't intend. Would it be intellectually honest to ignore that alternative meaning?
>Most of my colleagues in my English program went on to law school, which dovetails nicely with that analytical type of mind but as you say, endless dissection robs the work of what attracted me to it in the first place.
My favorite introduction to a book is the one Tolkien wrote for The Fellowship of the Ring. I can't find the exact quote, but basically he says the book is meant purely for the enjoyment of the reader and shouldn't be interpreted.
A million literature teachers cried out and were suddenly silenced.
> I can't find the exact quote, but basically he says the book is meant purely for the enjoyment of the reader and shouldn't be interpreted.
Not really:
> I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
Really he's saying that complicated things are much more interesting than simple ones, and invites discussion. Whether or not everyone's literature teachers did a decent job of that is a wholly separate question.
The whole Forward is too long to fit in the margins of this forum. Here seems to me to be the likely section:
The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally
appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with
reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have
read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive
was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story
that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and
at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my
own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was
inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate
have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I
have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works,
or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the
points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that
fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please
everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points;
for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or
chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially
approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many
defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation
either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these
in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too
short.
As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the
author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it
put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but
its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of
the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter,
"The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was
written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of
inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed
along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its
sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already
written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began
in 1939 or its sequels.
The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its
conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the
legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against
Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr
would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get
possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the
time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into
Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own
with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that
conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they
would not long have survived even as slaves.
Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of
those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike
allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew
old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true
or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience
of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory';
but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the
purposed domination of the author.
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience,
but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are
extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best
guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also
false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and
critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the
events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful
influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to
feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often
forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an
experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918
all but one of my close friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous
matter: it has been supposed by some that 'The Scouring of the Shire'
reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my
tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from
the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as
developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance
or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis
in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely
different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in
childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when
motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still
building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the
last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that
long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young
miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was
not named Sandyman.
Surely you mean Tolkien said you can interpret it as you wish, ie. that there's no canonical/right/word-of-god interpretation (I get so furious when people have that idea).
reply