(urth) Pike's ghost

[James Wynn]

>
>>>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>>>> What do you mean by "wrong" and "misled?" These seem to assume that
>>>> there is a True Interpretation and all others are wrong, where I think
>>>> that texts in general and Wolfe's texts in particular are polysemous
>>>> and subject to a multitude of (apparently) contradictory
>>>> interpretations, all based on the text.
>>>
>>> entonio at gmail.com wrote:
>>> It doesn't. 'X is wrong' is not the same as 'All but Y are wrong'.
>>
>> Perhaps, but if your method of proof is to assert that there is an
>> alternate interpretation, then you aren't proving anything except that
>> there is an alternate interpretation.
>
> António Marques wrote:
> It can become entangled, no? When you point out actual problems with 
> an interpretation and *then* people ask you for an alternative,

Unfortunately that is not the only way it happens. What very often 
happens is that someone suggests an explanation of an occurrence that is 
not explicitly declared or based on irony or allusion, and someone else 
will respond with:

    "This explanation is a totally unsupported. The truth of this event
    is clearly declared in text [James notes: although actually only
    implied] by this flat half-blind reading of the story that I follow.
    Thus, I have proved that my initial reading is correct and not in
    need of enlightenment because I am eschewing any high literary
    understanding of the events and other literary voodoo."


This person is not refuting an explanation AND THEN going on to explain 
his alternate understanding. He refuting an explanation WITH his 
alternate understanding.
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