No surprise we’re on the same page here, Danny. Yes, there’s a world of difference between entering a story and analysing a text. The former necessitates humility and patience, and the latter a set of assumptions and techniques that are often simply delusions of superiority. For my money, the best deconstruction self-deconstructs eg Beckett, O’Brien.
Violence (more per Flannery than McCarthy) shouldn’t be about shock for shock’s sake but rather a preternatural illumination - a light on Cain. This will always be appropriately unnerving and worthy of perennial attention.
I remember being forced to analyse Dulce et Decorum est in English aged fourteen. The sense of tedium was like a bradawl to the skull yet at the same time my whole being thrilled to hear familiar words rendered so sublime they’ve stayed with me and survived the desecration. I’ll never dull to the transfiguring violence of those ‘froth-corrupted lungs’.
No surprise we’re on the same page here, Danny. Yes, there’s a world of difference between entering a story and analysing a text. The former necessitates humility and patience, and the latter a set of assumptions and techniques that are often simply delusions of superiority. For my money, the best deconstruction self-deconstructs eg Beckett, O’Brien.
Violence (more per Flannery than McCarthy) shouldn’t be about shock for shock’s sake but rather a preternatural illumination - a light on Cain. This will always be appropriately unnerving and worthy of perennial attention.
I remember being forced to analyse Dulce et Decorum est in English aged fourteen. The sense of tedium was like a bradawl to the skull yet at the same time my whole being thrilled to hear familiar words rendered so sublime they’ve stayed with me and survived the desecration. I’ll never dull to the transfiguring violence of those ‘froth-corrupted lungs’.