This post came to mind recently. I still read Andrew Gelman's blog (though I don't understand the actual math of his field in the least) and at the time I was flattered that he had mentioned me in his blog (even though disagreeing with me). Agreement is kind of overrated, anyway. He attributed to me the idea that "the purpose of a poem is to be wonderful," and, though those weren't my words, it is what I believe. In fact, I don't know what the objection to this statement is. I was amused by a recent post about "poetry is everywhere, even in a box labeled poetry."
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I'm reading A Theory of Adaptation, by Hutcheon, always a knowledgeable and deeply frustrating theorist. She claims that "the creative process itself in all its dimensions is still taboo or at least out of critical fashion." But is this really true? I know the book was written in 2006, but was this true even then? I never thought creative process meant "intentionality," though that is the concept she is debating here. (p. 108).
In actual practice, people write about what they want to. Biographers write about biography, and perhaps about the process of creation. As far as I know, writing biographies has not been taboo, or we wouldn't have tons of biographies of every single significant author.
"By their very existence, adaptations remind us that there is no such thing as an autonomous text or an original genius that can transcend history, either public or private." (p. 111)
Not really. So if I set to music an ode by Keats, then Keats is no longer a genius? How does that work, exactly? The poem is still there, autonomously. I detest this kind of thinking, its smug knowingness. "There is no such thing!"It's like the kind of people who will remind you that cinema is a collaborative art, so we should watch the credits to the end, and not give too much credit to the auteur. Yes, we know this. Transcending history is, of course, a straw man.
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