Preconceived Notions

I came into all three of the novels we've read so far this semester with significant ideas already formed about them, all of which turned out to be flawed. Probably the worst concerned Catcher, which I had seen since middle school as the book for pseudo-intellectual jerks who wanted an excuse to complain about other people -- without ever having actually read it. I mixed it up with Naked Lunch and the Sex Pistols as "phony" expressions of contrarianism, which might just be because everyone around me liked them and so I decided that I didn't want to. After all, what's worse than a contrarian? Anyway, by the time I actually read Catcher this year my mood had mellowed enough that I was only mildly apprehensive towards it, which was just enough for me to be extremely pleasantly surprised. I definitely was not expecting to relate to Holden as strongly as I did, especially because I had no idea that he would have such a nuanced and well-explored history. Ironically, the sense of surprise that I felt as I got to know Holden -- kind of like the feeling of disliking someone for years for some ill-formed reason, only to find that you really get along once you actually try to talk to them -- probably really enhanced my enjoyment of the novel, as it made me eager to learn more about him so that my old ideas could be completely replaced.

My idea of The Bell Jar was similar to that of Catcher, if a bit less intense. I knew that Bell Jar fans were basically equivalent to Catcher fans, except for a slightly different gender ratio, but I guess I never knew enough personally to get really worked up it. If I was at all anxious about The Bell Jar, that feeling vanished by the middle of the first page, and I've essentially forgotten whatever worries I had going on when I started reading. In that sense my opinions on starting weren't really significant enough to change my reading experience. However, I have known enough Bell Jar fans that I started the novel with an idea of her biography, and I do think that knowing about her suicide changed how I viewed the book. I tried to put it out of my head, but I can't totally rule out the possibility that, had I not known what happened to the real-life version of Esther, I would have been slower to accept the severity of her illness, and maybe even been less sympathetic towards her than I ultimately was. It's a tragic story no matter what, but knowing that the "bell jar" does come back down makes the novel's end just that little bit more scary. On the other hand, maybe knowing that Plath lived to be 30 also changed my reaction; it's possible that if I hadn't made the connection between Esther and her author, I would have been even more frightened by her suicide attempts, because I wouldn't have known for certain that she would live, even in the middle of the novel.

Speaking of biographical information changing my reading of a book: I hadn't read anything by Joyce before starting Portrait, but I did have a pretty strong sense of him as the kind of author you're supposed to respect, for writing big, experimental novels of impenetrable genius. If anything, Portrait was probably a little less challenging than I was expecting, and not because it was an easy read. But knowing a little about Joyce didn't just mean that I was relieved that his book was manageable; it also really changed my interpretation of Stephen. We've talked a lot in class about Joyce's active position as author, and especially the irony he uses in narrating his own past, but his story also has a passive effect on how we view Stephen. It's possible that if  we didn't know that Stephen actually would turn out to be one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, we would be less patient with his (at times) extreme arrogance and sense of "otherness." I know that a lot of people still found Stephen insufferable even knowing who he eventually becomes, but for me his behavior is acceptable for someone who actually is different somehow; after all, if Joyce hadn't been as self-centered and dismissive as he makes his younger self out to be, then he may never have been able to develop to the point where he could write something like Portrait. Of course, that doesn't mean his behavior is necessarily good, just that it's somewhat understandable.

It reminds me a little bit of how I reacted to Lady Lazarus today; the language feels hyperbolic in its intensity, but I was somehow able to forgive that having already read The Bell Jar. Somehow that text, along with the knowledge of Plath's suicide, gave me enough background knowledge about the nature of her illness that I believed her hyperbole, and accepted that her inner turmoil actually was as bad as she makes it out to be. I guess that's the third kind of preconceived notion: the background knowledge you have from simply having read a given author's work before. Having already read something by the author of whatever you're reading is an unavoidable familiarity; no matter how hard I try, I can't avoid drawing parallels between the two texts, to try and understand the author better. Every piece of writing is like a conversation, and as you go along you can end up feeling a familiarity (or even friendship) with the person whose stuff you've been reading for so long. This type of relationship might actually be the most "damaging" to the integrity of whatever you're reading, because you can't help but connect the opinions and experiences you already associate with the writer to the new work. The question is whether this is actually a bad thing; unlike the experience of disliking a book because of the people you associate it with, coming in with a pre-established relationship with the author probably helps you understand their actual thought process, and by extension the meaning of their book, better. I guess it just comes down to what the author wants of our their book: some people want their books to be a way to make themselves better understood, while others (like Salinger) may want to keep their novels as separate from their own lives as possible. If they seem to want the latter, then we owe it to them to at least try to forget about how much we loved their last book, or that juicy story we heard about their younger days, or how the people we didn't like in middle school wouldn't shut up about them.