<墙壁上的窗户和窗户里往外张望的猫>The Oscar Night
The highlight of the Oscar Night on Sunday was not about Oscar. It was the dinner at Jessica’s house. The wontons she made were extremely delicious. I thought it was the best wonton I have ever had, while others acclaimed that the taste of the wonton was so good that it was almost like life experience.
Then we came back home to watch Oscar ceremony. Oscar put on a fair show last night, but nothing was really creative or striking. I have not actually watched one single movie nominated in this year’s Academy Award yet. But I read the reviews in the CNN website, which were pretty good at predicting the winners. According to my friends, who have watched most of the nominated movies, no movies last year were really extraordinary and as good as a few from 2007.
The Indian guy was obviously overwhelmed when he received the award for the best original song and score. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of inspiration could be ignited when Bollywood meet Hollywood. Well, Slumdog Millionaire is still a Hollywood movie. For a moment, I thought I was watching our annual Spring Festival Show instead of Academy Award ceremony, when the Indian songwriter/signer put on a very vital and of course exotic show with his Indian fellows.
Netflix
Now I have to two reasons to sign up Netflix, watching relatively new movies and watching old moviesJ I want to watch some of Woody Allen’s old movies again. The writer of this Woody Allen On Woody Allen has asked very good questions. Although I liked the sense of humor in Woody-style dialogues in his movies, I didn’t get the essence and now I think I can have more laugh and contemplation from the movies, after reading the conversations between Woody Allen and the author.
Interpretation
While in my adolescence, I was crazy about detective stories. I enjoyed figuring out all the possible or impossible connections and relations in the stories. Everything seemed to be suspicious and every word could be suspenseful. I usually had made my own conclusions regarding who the murder was and how he/she had done the crimes before reaching to the end of the book. Sometimes I was right, sometimes wrong. I was almost addicted to this mental exercise.
Unfortunately, my skill of interpretation doesn’t come along when it comes to other genres. I was further assured about this while June, Xiao Tie and I were talking about Raymond Carver’s short stories the other night. I have sensed something in the stories, like the Calm, but don’t know how to interpret. This happens to me very often. It is like I have a sensitive nose but am not talented or skilled enough to tell what exactly cause the smell.
The teachers in Chinese Classes in the high school always tried to guide us to interpret the symbolistic descriptions/sentences. I didn’t like it. I was often wondering what if the author had not intended to convey this or that meaning with so-called symbols. It would be like a joke that readers insisted they had figured out something which was not the author’s intentions.
When we were discussing about the last three paragraphs in Preservation, I said Raymond Carver had probably just iterated a random scene which happens everywhere. Xiao Tie asked if I suggested that Carver had just wanted to tease is readers. Xiao Tie raised a good point that there are always underlying reasons why the author writes the stories in this way not others, he/she describes this scene at this point not others at other points when the story progresses. So what are the reasons? I started to feel like it is a fun exercise to discuss about possible symbols in the stories, no matter what I can get out of it.
2 comments:
Just passing by...interesting topic...
For the symbolism in the literray works, the early school of literature criticism would spend loads of time trying to interpret the so-called original intentions of the auther, while later on, literature criticism paid more and more attention to the readers' role in interpreting a litterray work, "Reader-response criticism". Just like the popular saying goes, "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes." I believe all different schools have their own merits and demerits (later the modern school went even further to its extremes) while personally I prefer the latter, which concentrate more on the readers' active experiences in a literry work, instead of making enormous efforts trying to guess what was in the author's head, and is much less imposing, in my oppinion. Maybe you can try this approach, or combine them together, for a more fulfilling reading experience. I have read somewhere something like " when a painter has done with his painting, he should reside to the background and let the painting speak for itself." A writer should also, by not imposing on his reader any possible ways to interpret his work, leave the absolute freedom of any interpretation to its readers. But bien sur, "to let go" is never easy. I have never read anything written by the author in ur article, but from what you described about his style, maybe he learned a bit about " letting go" - he stopped right there.
BTW, I also had the same experience in high-school Chinese class, heehee. The typical line of my Chinese teacher is " why did the author choose this particular word here instead of any other ones? what would be different if we we change this word into another in this line?" I would always be thinking, silently of course, "no difference." Thanks to your mentioning, I had a good laugh.
Very interesting and convincing points! Thank you for the suggestions as well. I will try the approach, the mixed one, in my reading. I was a fast reader and tend to devour everything with digestion. I may pause and contemplate when I am curious about certain things. But it happens only occasionally. I should consider revising my new year resolutions: not only read more, but read in a more active and smarter way to gain more fulfilling reading experience:-)
You are absolutely right about Raymond Carver’s style, or my impression of his style, Let Go. He started a story and cut words to the marrow, leaving little or very subtle hint for readers to imagine what would happen later or why it is happening this way. Then he stopped right there and let his readers contemplate, guess and discuss.
In terms of “letting the paint speak for itself”, it has two-fold impact on the audience or readers in my opinion. It gives us more freedom to imagine, interpret and absorb; on the other hand, it may cause unnecessary ambiguity, which of course, depends on one’s capability to appreciate art. I am not there yet:) I wondered if you had seen some of my pictures. I always feel like I have to say something about my pictures because they are just not expressive enough without words. Again, as an amateur photographer, I am not there either:)
Glad you had a good laugh. You also reminded me of one funny thing happened in my Chinese class in high school. The teacher was reading one sentence from the book, that sentence happened to include one word, chewing wax (Jiao La). One of my fellow classmates was catch up by this teacher and asked what he thought of that sentence. The classmate stood up and said that the teacher was making the class so boring like chewing wax. Of course the teacher was very awkward and murmured “I don’t think you understand what is Jiao La”, something like that. ^_^
Hope you can pass by often. I enjoy your comments a lot!
Post a Comment