Misinterpretation

I began reading Jerome McGann’s essay “Interpretation,” with my feet propped on the make–shift desk in my study. The book was in my lap and I quickly became engrossed, wondering if what I was reading was adding up to the idea that I had complete freedom to interpret his text any way I wanted to. I was so intrigued by the idea that as I reached for my coffee cup, I accidentally spilled a drop on the page containing the words, "As the literary work passes on through time and other hands…it bears along with and as itself the gathered history of all its engagements. Sometimes some of these codes [are]…physical transformations, like book damage […] Often, perhaps even more often, those multiplying histories have to be pursued; who were the readers of the book…?” I stared at the seemingly innocuous coffee stain wondering… wondering whom in the future might get lost in wonder while pondering its presence on the page... and about the nature of the person who spilled it.

As I read on, I could barely hold back the excitement I felt when reading the line, “Literary works can be, have been, performed in a variety of interpretive ways, ‘Did you ever read one of her poems backwards…? A something takes over the mind.’ That is Emily Dickinson’s remarkable proposal for a recitation–based method of radical reinterpretation” (162). Right then and there, I decided to retrace my study of McGann’s essay, reading right to left instead of left to right. At first, I was uncertain whether to just read the sentences backwards, or the words themselves. But, I quickly opted for reading each word in reverse, because, if I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it right. I was on a quest, a glorious quest, bound and determined to find that “something” that would “take over my mind.” The reverse study of this portion of the essay (two pages), took twelve hours, but it was the most rewarding twelve hours I’ve ever experienced. By the time I reached the coffee stain on the previous page, I was in a state of delirious confusion so intense, so concentrated, so magnificently profound that explication defies description. I saw “something” in that coffee stain, something destined to forever remain as only a vision, only an apparition, only a taste of the infinite mystery of life itself.

I have now decided to read all texts backwards, and I’ll gladly take the heat for having absolutely no understanding of what the authors may have had in mind. I am now dedicated to a new and wonderful way of interpreting the work of others without regard for their thoughts or meaning, for as McGann points out at the end of his essay:

To deliberately accept the inevitable failure of interpretive adequacy is to work toward discovering new interpretive virtues […] Riding’s attitude toward the process of critical thinking is helpful: ‘our minds are still moving, and backward as well as forward; the nearest we get to truth at any given moment is, perhaps, only an idea––a dash of truth somewhat flavouring the indeterminate substance of our minds.’ This thought calls for a critical method intent on baring its own devices. We take it seriously because it makes sure that we do not take it too seriously. (168)

God, I love that last line.