One further example of ‘Under-Reading’, which could best be described as “getting completely the wrong end of the stick”.
Back in the 1800’s, as the policy of ‘Manifest Destiny’ saw white America expand East to West across the sub-continent from sea to shining sea, the early settlers hit a snag - there were already people there. Indians and Mexicans, mostly, the latter actually governing where Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and parts of California are now. Following the Mexican Wars of the 1840’s, most of this territory was ceded to America, with many of the original inhabitants becoming foreigners in their own land virtually overnight. Not only socially but economically marginalized, these people were quickly reduced to the depths of poverty, to the point where a novelist with a conscience decided ‘something must be done.’
Helen Hunt Jackson spent 1882 and 1883 touring Southern California’s impoverished barrios around San Diego on a fact-finding expedition designed to expose the horrific conditions many hundreds of thousands were experiencing. The material she gathered formed the basis for her novel ‘Ramona’ published in 1884, which became an instant bestseller.
Jackson died just ten months later, never witnessing the huge impact ‘Ramona’ was destined to have on its readers - which is probably just as well. She no doubt hoped it would be the next ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, raising awareness of Hispanic poverty in the way Harriet Beecher Stowe had managed on behalf of enslaved blacks. (1) But the book’s message was, however, entirely misread. Or more accurately, scarcely noticed. A novel intended to shame the leaders of a great democracy into remedial action became a source of myth-making and material for California boosterism instead.
‘Ramona’ is the story of an orphan, the half-caste child of a white father and an Indian mother, who is raised by a foster parent, Señora Gonzago Moreno, but kept ignorant of her true parents’ identity. She falls in love with an Indian, a shepherd implausibly named Alessandro. Señora Moreno, who hates the “redskins”, tries to keep the two apart, but they elope and are married by Father Gaspara, and Ramona is forced go to live with Alessandro's people. Then the social message starts getting hammered home - and I mean hammered: a child is born to the couple but dies of medical negligence. Land is needed by Yankee farmers who force the tribe to move. Ramona’s husband is murdered by the settlers before her very eyes, but she manages to escape, living with the knowledge that the courts will not take the word of an Indian woman against a white.
Nobody seemed to care about that second bit, though. They liked the love story, when Ramona’s living in a pre-lapsarian world of idyllic Spanish missions full of quaint adobe huts and well-meaning Catholic missionaries. Soon after publication, coach trips started visiting ‘Ramona Country’; you could see the bed where Ramona and Alessandro consummated their love; they still sell bottled ‘Ramona water’ in the town of Hemet, California, so Jackson no doubt continues to revolve in her grave over one hundred years and 300 imprints of the book later, knowing that her readers sold her short. Many Hispanics still don’t have much fun, but the book’s legacy is everywhere, particularly in the insufferably twee cities of Santa Fe and Taos in New Mexico, where even the gas stations are disguised as pink adobe shacks - because they won’t get planning permission if they aren’t.
This kind of Under-Reading is mighty odd. It isn’t as if the message isn’t expressed strongly enough - it practically assaults you with a sharp stick. What its mis-readers did to ‘Ramona’ is on a par with interpreting ‘King Lear’ as a play about the joys of senility. Something clearly went wrong with the connection between the novel’s meaning and its audience, which, on this occasion, seems to lie with the readers’ distaste for anything but the picturesque. A satisfactory Dialogue has not been established. And that is Principle 2 of how readers engage with literature, which we can illustrate with another example from Yellowstone.
As the American West was being explored and mapped in the mid 19th-century, stories reached the East Coast cities of an incredible place where boiling gases erupted from the surface of the earth, where molten mud bubbled, and where waterfalls tumbled down precipitous canyons. Few believed these claims, particularly since most of them were made by trappers who had lived alone too long in the backwoods with only coyotes and moonshine for company. But sufficient curiosity was aroused in the Federal Government for them to allocate money to an exploratory expedition fronted by Ferdinand Hayden, director of the US Geological Survey. To provide the necessary evidence to support his observations, he invited William Henry Jackson, a practitioner of the new-fangled art of photography to accompany him. Then, at the last minute, a New York painter, Thomas Moran practically invited himself along for the ride, and the party was complete.
Jackson took over 400 photos of the Yellowstone region - nothing to us now, but back then a laborious and time-consuming process. Moran painted furiously, and the two men got on famously.
The entire expedition fell in love with Yellowstone, and in his final report Hayden recommended that contrary to the usual Federal policy which encouraged the piecemeal division of territory into farmsteads (with the accompanying slaughter or removal of the indigenous peoples), Yellowstone should be preserved as a wilderness (he was concerned that the same fate that befell the Niagara Falls region, which is still one of the most vile blots on man’s environmental record, should not be repeated).
When they saw the photos accompanying Hayden’s 500 page report, Congress was skeptical. There was nothing wrong with them, given the primitive box camera technology Jackson was using, but examining the images now, they are, well, rather flat. And, of course in sepia. Yellowstone seemed to be nothing special. So the region looked like it was destined to be overrun with cheap motels, fast food outlets, tacky souvenir stalls and Piggly Wigglies just like Niagara.
Knowing he had nothing to lose, Hayden exhibited the paintings. Moran’s work, by contrast with the photos, was far from figurative; the closest parallel I can think of is with Turner’s mid-period landscapes - recognizable physical features partially transfigured by rich lighting effects.
Now what the Congressmen saw was, in fact, more than was actually there. They were looking at the spirit, atmosphere, aura, emanation, essence, call it what you will, of this magnificent wilderness area as witnessed through the transforming vision of the artist - and they too fell in love with it, even though they’d never been there. Thus was the world’s first National Park decreed in 1872, preserving it for future generations; 2.2 million acres were set aside for "the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. And they still do, despite the godawful accommodation and food.
So once the politicians had penetrated the surface of the region, and had been given some idea of what it actually felt like to be there, they were convinced. So the ‘way in’ (Principle 1) has prompted dialogue between the object and the viewer (Principle 2), which, in its turn, has led to Empathy (Principle 3). And it’s exactly the same when you’re reading a book, or indeed, perusing any work of art. Or, rather, of course, any successful work of art.
Evidence, or literal representation, won’t necessarily take you under the skin of anything (although the artist’s editorial eye, what he chooses to focus on, is crucial to meaning as we’ll see in Part 3); but art will do that, and what lies beneath the surface is meaning. But meaning isn’t just about seeing beyond the literal or figurative - that’s just artistic evisceration, and the whole can never be more than the sum of the parts; (2) it’s also in the way the reader (or viewer or listener) subsequently reacts to it - what it awakens in his mind. Which, added to the sum of the parts, produces meaning.
To engage with meaning is an active, not a passive experience. It can’t be spoon fed to you and be terribly nourishing. (3) And because you participate, you can claim the meaning as part of you. You have taken the meaning from the work of art, but you’ve also necessarily had to give of yourself to create the empathy that gives rise to meaning. So meaning actually is the two-way traffic Harold Bloom suggests.
If we wanted to get all Platonic about it (or even existentialist), you could say that both you and the work of art are more complete for that experience of empathy; the quality of your individual attention has added to the total sum of attention the work of art has cumulatively attracted, thereby strengthening and validating its meaning. (4) So it’s more than just popularity, or figures on a balance sheet; the work of art is accruing interest of a totally unquantifiable spiritual nature. The trouble is, no-one can audit or collate these experiences - we’ve no idea how many people have involved themselves with meaning in this way. What we do know is that the work in question continues to be bought, discussed, and therefore forms part of our intellectual currency, and, indeed heritage. And once the book’s reputation has achieved this status, it’s practically self-sustaining. Its admission to the Pantheon or Canon has been guaranteed, and won’t easily be revoked. That’s if you believe in canons, and many don’t. Particularly these days. More of which in a moment.
So you’ve connected with the text, and you’re empathizing like crazy. Thus far, however, you’re on your own. You are Bloom’s ‘selfish reader’. You may think you’re the first person ever to feel like this. But there are aspects of reading Bloom doesn’t fully cover which mainly group themselves around some of the more social aspects of reading. He isn’t convinced there is such a thing, but recent history is proving him to be mistaken. And a good thing too.
Footnotes:
1. ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ was perceived as hugely influential in championing the abolitionists’ cause. In the midst of the Civil War in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln said to Stowe when introduced, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" She should have slapped him, the patronizing bugger. She was little, though.
2. As we’ll see later on a lot of lit crit doesn’t get beyond this stage of meaning as a sort of Airfix kit - assemble all the pieces and you’re bound to get the meaning. Actually, you won’t. You’ll have a Hawker Hurricane. Now you can put that model plane up on the shelf and statically display it, or you can play with it. Only the latter course of action will begin to access the model’s meaning. Because play is interactive (dread word, but wholly applicable in this example).
So meaning is not a formula. Now up-end the telescope, and you’ve got another incorrect assumption - identify all the individual pieces and you’ll find out how it works. You won’t. You’ll have a Hawker Hurricane in bits minus the animating principle, which can only be apparent when the pieces are glued together. Remember Plato’s chicken.
3. Remember ‘Ancrene Wisse’ we mentioned earlier?
4. Whether or not you can articulate the experience, or assess its value, is perhaps a secondary consideration. You felt it, and that’ll do for now.
