Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (03/30/87)
Really-From: drukman%UMASS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
(Jonathan S. Drukman)
First off, thanks to those who responded to my article on the
significance of the lyrics of "Suspended In Gaffa". I appreciated
reading all the comments, positive and otherwise.
To address IED's points, I honestly must confess that I agree with all the
points he made and am quite unable to shoot them down, especially as most
of his info came straight from Kate herself! In my defense, I can say
that I was not attempting to come up with a "doKTrine" (as he phrased it)
but was merely trying to express a point of view. The best thing I can
think of to say is that the whole point of analysing literature is
trying to find things in it that the author never dreamed of putting in.
Obviously, if Kate says that "the garden" refers to her old 8-track
studio and not to the classic trysting place, then that's what she
intended it to mean when she wrote it. It doesn't mean that that
interpretation is the only one. Clearly it didn't have that significance
to me until I read IED's letter! I think it is all too easy to fall for
the "biographical fallacy" which is attaching too much importance to the
circumstances under which a work was written, rather than the actual text
of the work itself. It's very easy to fall back on interviews and say
"well, Kate said that she was referring to her studio so ipso facto that's
what it MUST be!" If you consistently do this and don't leap to your
own conclusions, then your imagination will atrophy. I totally misread
the lyrics to "The Wedding List" simply because I wasn
wasn't actually reading along with the song and I came out with a rather
different view of the events in the song!
So, glad you liked it, and maybe I'll be encouraged now to write again.
Thanks!
--Jon Drukman