Who knows. My thought is that since he left it alone, perhaps it was in fact just a poorly written essay. Then again in school I had a teacher give me a failing grade on a deeply researched paper because he didn’t like my “tone” which I only learned because I met with him to ask why the hell I’d done all this work if I could have done nothing for the same grade. So I asked if he’d take a re-write, and then took the exact same essay in my rage fists, copied it sentence for sentence but wrote it as if I were listing items for a tax form, just a 20 page dossier of facts, and returned the new version within his office hours that day because I was insane. He liked the second version so much he not only gave me an A but photocopied some further documentation related to the essay. While I was happy he gave me the chance, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It’s not like I tried to conjure George Carlin in my writing the first time or something I followed the usual rules of grammar and flow, and the information conveyed was not changed, no research was added or subtracted, the difference between an A+ and a fail was literally stylistic… and it wasn’t a creative writing class. So what constitutes a poorly written essay for what teacher… who knows. Best not to assume either way, honestly it could easily be both an obnoxious teacher and a terrible essay.
Haha! Yes it was! By all the saints it was rubbish. Can’t forgive an author for pumping that tripe out. Refuse to go back to his shop.
You are invalidating your own argument. The “learned interpretation upon which a student may be graded” is based on various systems of communication between the author and the reader (like allusion and metaphor), so this in fact emphasizes the author’s intent.
If that were in any way true people would not be saying Fahrenheit 451 was about censorship. No, the learned interpretation used for grading a students grasp of the material has nothing at all to do with the artists intent.
I once picked up a special edition of Fahrenheit 451 that had all the various forwards Bradburry wrote for it over the years. You can actually watch his interpretation of what his own writing was about shift over time. It’s kinda fascinating.
They aren’t mutually exclusive. Knowing Lovecraft’s intent helps inform a lot of themes in his works. Namely, the terrible, racist ones, which are an overall detriment to the quality of the work.
I can speak from personal experience that occasionally the themes you intend to put into a piece of writing are the weakest ones, and the stronger themes were happy accidents of some kind. Either it happens through unconscious manifestation of internal beliefs, or maybe a natural consequence of consistent writing of character and situation giving rise to unplanned themes, or maybe something else entirely. It’s not just me though: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30937/famous-novelists-symbolism-their-work-and-whether-it-was-intentional
Perhaps McEwan, known for his highly successful novels such as Amsterdam and Atonement, should stick to writing and leave the tutoring to, well, tutors.
A very questionable “perhaps”:
Is this about some weakness in Ian McEwan’s tutoring skills?
Is it about the grading teacher’s own failings and lack of understanding?
Is it about Greg McEwan’s own misunderstanding and/or inability to successfully translate Daddy’s input to essay?
Who can say? Unfortunately, the situation was too juicy and apparently too ironic to pass up as a chance to dump on the easy target.
The article takes a cheap shot at the teacher. The replys here are pointing out that there are alternatives to that thesis.
The NYT article has Ian focusing on his resultant self-doubt/self-effacement, while the BB article clearly takes aim at Ian’s abilities as a tutor.
I feel you are mischaracterizing the BB article. It clearly takes aim at the teacher.
I beg to differ.
From the BB article:
“Famous authors don’t always make good tutors. At least not in the case of Ian McEwan, who tried to tutor his son, Greg, who was writing his high school A-level essay about a novel he had read.”
“Perhaps McEwan, known for his highly successful novels such as Amsterdam and Atonement, should stick to writing and leave the tutoring to, well, tutors.”
I am a qualified high school English teacher. I don’t teach, but I tutor high school English. From my (admittedly narrow) experience, English isn’t usually well taught. Just a few days ago I was reading over a student’s notes from her English teacher. In those notes was a sentence that said Shakespeare wrote in Old English. So who knows what happened here.
This is problematic, if upon reading Lovecraft you do not see the racism, is it because you don’t know he is racist?, because you (the royal you) don’t see racism because your own worldview is racist? Or is it because you do not understand his use of imagery since it is not common today?
If the last one is the case then wouldn’t Lovecraft’s work stop being racist if we merely stop pointing out his racism?
On my first reading of Lovecraft, i never noticed that, and trust me, he would have looked down upon me as a savage if he knew my background. So yes, relying on the author for meaning is:
A) Not always possible.
B) Not always advisable
C) Not always useful
But then again, maybe not everybody thinks like I do, but I have no problem with, on the one hand, making up my mind on the value of a work and on the other hand using the author’s intent, when available, to compare against my reading.
So yeah, they aren’t mutually exclusive, maybe just different readings which may or may not overlap which is the point I was trying to make.
I agree with this. But that does not mean that we must lock ourselves to our own interpretation, in my opinion, being able to view a work through different lenses is actually more powerful than merely, “taking it in”.
The reason we might read a text different from the author’s intent can be down to a lack on the authors part or in a significant difference in context. Watching a scene from a movie where anything IT related is happening is hard for me, because I know a bit about it and I always see where it’s wrong, doctors probably experience the same thing watching a medical drama. this doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the rest of the movie/tv show, I understand why I view this differently.
All of this is to say that I agree that an author can put more into a work than they may intend, that does not mean that there isn’t an intent. Our own reading is subject to our experiences and sometimes, reading something the author didn’t intend to write only tells us more about ourselves than the author or the characters in the story, a worthwhile pursuit but it’s not healthy to only look for ourselves in the art we consume. Lastly, being able to reconcile both of these views gives us a broader reading of a work, if we happen to find something we don’t like, well that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Edited for clarity.
Generally speaking, I wonder if proper English — even if well taught – isn’t being reinforced. Are there English teachers out there throwing up their hands and giving up in frustration?
I’m less concerned with proper English, more what English actually is. English should teach audience, critical thinking skills and code-switching.
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