No subject

[Subhash Jaireth]

I fully support Gary Morson's idea that criticism need to focus on the work
rather than the perceived, interpreted, guessed and for that matter
'constructed' motives.

Khanin began his contribution to the list with the words: "Some people (who
have not read it yet) asked if I trashed Emerson's book. Well, I guess I
did."


In reply, allow me to tell a short story (I hope it would be read as an
allegory):

A sugarcane farmer in a small village in India decided to cart his sugarcane
to a factory. He piled up the cane onto his bullock-cart, said good-bye to
his wife and set on. His little black dog decided to go with him. The day
was hot and the dog decided to walk underneath the cart protected from the
fiery sun. The journey was monotonous and boring. To keep himself busy the
dog began telling himself in his doggy voice: "Look how strong I am, I can
carry the whole cart on my back." The farmer heard the dog and laughed.


Subhash

                -----Original Message-----
                From:   Gary Saul Morson [mailto:g-morson at nwu.edu]
                Sent:   Wednesday, 16 June 1999 0:20
                To:     SEELANGS at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
                Subject:

                Frankly, I don't think Caryl Emerson needs to be defended,
and if she did,
                she could do it herself.

                        But there is a more important issue involved.   It
is one thing to
                criticize a scholar's work  on scholarly grounds -- it makes
errors, its
                argument is unpersuasive, there are gaps in logic, etc.
But it is quite
                another to do so by alleging motives.   This form of
argument is wrong not
                only because a Prof. Khanin can have no idea what the
motives really were,
                but also, and more importantly, because even if the motives
are bad, the
                argument might still be right (and vice versa, for that
matter). If
                Einstein had the worst motives for E = mc2 or Bakhtin for
describing
                Dostoevsky's novels as polyphonic, that is entirely
irrelevant to whether
                their theories are correct.   Prof. Knanin's SEEJ letter
disturbs me not
                because it criticizes Caryl, but because of its mode of
argument, which, I
                think, is fundamentally hostile to what scholarship is all
about and
                therefore causes damage to the profession.   The offense is
not just to
                Caryl, but to all of us.

                Gary Saul Morson
                ----------------------------------------------------------
                Gary Saul Morson
                Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities
                Professor of Slavic Languages
                Kresge Hall
                Northwestern University
                Evanston, IL   60208-2206.   847-491-3651
                -----------------------------------------------------------