10-24-2013, 09:01 AM
Ray, good points all around. 
However, with any kind of literature, barring things like surrealist automatic writing, the dichotomy between reader and writer is tenuous at best. I know Barthes' did a lot to argue that the reader is the one who really constitutes the meaning of a text, and had some compelling things to say. Even so, there evidently is such a thing as writerly mastery. The mere fact of revision demands that we see as much.
Maybe I'll have to give Eliot a more earnest and in depth go.
However, with any kind of literature, barring things like surrealist automatic writing, the dichotomy between reader and writer is tenuous at best. I know Barthes' did a lot to argue that the reader is the one who really constitutes the meaning of a text, and had some compelling things to say. Even so, there evidently is such a thing as writerly mastery. The mere fact of revision demands that we see as much. Maybe I'll have to give Eliot a more earnest and in depth go.