Sunday, January 23, 2011
One Great Reader
Bernard says he came to the School to find his Own Great Reader – “the one person to whom I write, whom I will imagine as the ideal witness for my artistic life and work.” That intrigued me, because I hadn’t thought of it in that way before. Do you have a “Great Reader,” and if so, whom do we “write” for?
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Yes, and Roman was looking for the One Great Judge,the book says: the entity who could confirm his greatness, confirm his self-appraisal. He essentially wanted the literary equivalent of seeing his name in lights, the sensation of feeling admired and envied, whereas Bernard simply wrote because that's what he did, that's who he was, and he was seeking communion with something like a soulmate. Professional acclaim seemed to be the last thing on his mind. His project of corresponding with poets underlined this. He saw them as his comrades, not as his competitors. It was about poetry, not prizes.
ReplyDeleteWas it supposed to be clear who Bernard's One Great Reader was? Was it Miranda? Was it Roman? I thought it might be Lucy.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a “Great Reader,” and if so, whom do we “write” for?
Good question. Off and on throughout my life, I've envisioned myself as an artist. Often as a composer, but also sometimes as a writer. At times, I've seen someone as that "ideal witness," perhaps more of a muse than a reader, though, and at other times, I've been more like Roman and seen someone as a judge.
Lately, on the rare occasion when I've daydreamed about someday being an artist (I did so much more frequently when I was younger), I've thought of myself as my own reader. As a composer (as I would still like to be someday), you can have an intended performer as well as an inspiration and an intended audience. But the way I think about it right now (this could change again), I think a composer's intended audience should be him or herself. Write what you want to read or hear, and let everything else take care of itself. Inspiration is a separate issue -- it can come from anywhere, including a person, an object, a feeling, a picture, even just an idea.
Oh, good question, Ben. I thought maybe it was supposed to be apparent, by the book's end, who Bernard's Great Reader was. I assumed it was Miranda, but was that clear?
ReplyDeleteI think Roman just needed a lot more validation than Bernard, for whatever reason -- a feeling of abandonment, maybe, though it seems like his grandmother did a fine job raising him.
ReplyDeleteI think poetry would be a hellish way to look for your name in lights, though! It was an interesting view into a different world -- a creative world, but not one where you ultimately end up on a best-seller list or on Oprah or the Oscars. It's a stage-chasing kind of fame with a terribly small and fickle audience. I read that the author directs the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which I think is supposed to be the holy grail of creative writing instruction, so I would be curious how much this parallels the writers and writing she observes.
I think the author is saying something about the nature of these writing programs and the question of whether creative arts can really be taught in the same way that business or biology can be taught. Miranda and Bernard both are dubious of this notion that they can. I think in their minds you are either a poet or you are not. You can maybe benefit from critiques, but you can't be harmed by them, because a real poet will write poetry whether others like it or not. A real poet would not be daunted. I think that's why Bernard understands Miranda's distant approach to her students. He understands the problem of being a "teacher" and the problem of subjectivity. She refuses to coddle them. And I felt confident throughout that her affection for Roman would not have induced her to judge him a better poet than he actually was. Maybe that was misplaced confidence?
ReplyDeleteMost people whom we recognize as great writers learned in the school of life, not in a master's program, at least traditionally. Now book covers often say so-and-so is an alumnus of the Iowa program or Breadloaf or wherever. It's like we have this class of credentialed, degreed, professional writers, whereas we used to have sailors who ended up writing "Moby Dick" and actors who penned "Othello" and customs officials who came up with "The Scarlet Letter." Wallace Stevens worked for an insurance company. William Carlos Williams was a doctor.
One can take issue with a teacher's romantic involvement with a student, of course, but I think in some ways Miranda's approach to Roman, to be deeply, intimately involved with him, was a more authentic way of "teaching" the poetic arts than sitting around a seminar table. Their affair is the stuff of poetry. When people like Bernard document the "history" of poetry, it is these personal experiences that are most interesting and that we see as formative, not some class titled Poetry 601.
I think you're absolutely right, kc -- Roman didn't know enough about love and life to be a poet until the relationship with Miranda. Of course, she didn't have the relationship with him just so she could teach him, but that was a nice bonus for her as a teacher and for him as a student. Her class wasn't going to make him a poet; only living life could do that, and their affair was the most intense life experience he had ever had.
ReplyDeleteHe had never been in love before Miranda, as he said when they talked about his poems for the first time. But did he truly love her? Or Lucy? Can someone write good poetry about human relationships if they don't have real human relationships? His relationships seemed pretty shallow on his part.
This question can go both ways: What do his relationships (which we saw) tell us about his poetry (which we didn't see)? And what does his poetry (which we didn't see, but were told was good) tell us about his ability to connect with people (which seemed bad, but maybe I'm misjudging him, if his poetry was good)?
I don't think he loved her. But I don't think that's relevant. The experience he had with her is relevant and it taught him something about love: He realized all those years later that Miranda acted out of love. The narrator says he realizes this. And he learned something about poetry. He realized that Bernard was a better, more genuine poet than he was. Bernard wrote poetry that blew the top of your head off. Roman wrote poetry that won traditional prizes. His experiences with Miranda and Bernard, late as some of those realizations came, will stay with him for the rest of his life.
ReplyDeleteThere's some poetic justice perhaps in the fact that his own rash, self-centered exchanges with Bernard caused Bernard to send Roman back his correspondence — Roman now won't be included in the published correspondence of the "great living poets."
To add something I read this morning to kc's list of authors' jobs: we had "a world-class lepidopterist" write "Lolita."
ReplyDeleteI saw that on the wire yesterday! He's really something. And multilingual.
ReplyDelete