Chris: My nominee is the book "Numbers" in the Old Testament/Torah. (Of
course, some people would question that it is literature ...)
Geoff C
From: "Chris Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Envisioning
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:19:54 GMT
Can anyone offer an example of literature that cannot "evoke the many
layers
of experience."? If one looks close, and thinks hard enough, layers of
ambiguity can be found in even an apparently simple, straightforward story.
Biblical scholars, of various ideologies, do this all the time - and I am
sure it could be done with the upcoming film, "Changeling", with which
Michael
began this thread.
I suppose it's not impossible to make a great film around that idea -- but
not
if the *best* brief description of its story is that it's about "a 1920s
event in LA in which a woman's infant was abducted, and when the police
return
the child, she suspects it's a different boy"
Michael called that "mundane" -- and it certainly promises a superficial,
even
if stylish, thriller to me.
But ff it were more about "a woman who tries to raise a child she suspects
is
not hers" -- that might make for a good movie - where the emphasis is more
on
making a life than solving a whodunit.
************
I've said it many times that I use the word ambiguity in its poetic sense,
that is, to evoke the many layers of experience. Metaphor is the mode of
transit from one layer to another. I don't mean vagueness. I think I took
for
granted that any sort of ambiguity or metaphor is not necessarily the mark
of
greatness but that its use is necessary to greatness (in literature).
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