A week ago I wrote an essay, "A Most Modest Proposal," that I intended to be (note the allusion in the title) satire, and I thought when I had finished that it actually was satire, in fact very good satire indeed. The article suggested that one good solution to the brouhaha over same-sex marriage would be to get rid of the word marriage: that the problem was simply a question of semantics and could be easily solved linguistically.
The editor's response when he looked at it was that he felt the proposal was indeed modest and perhaps even serious. Moreover, he didn't find the piece particularly funny. Leaving aside the problem of whether there is some necessary relationship between humor and satire, as well as the question of who finds what funny, I decided that although I may have intended to write satire, if my reader didn't see satire, there was a problem. In the end, I decided to change my "satire" to "opinion" and let readers decide what they were reading.
The article was published and elicited several comments. One commenter questioned the allusion in the title, after another commenter had (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) suggested that the proposal might well have been a good idea. I responded — perhaps inconsistently given the point I am going to try to make in what follows — that I in fact had intended satire, but had acceded to an editorial suggestion. Then the other day another commenter wanted to know what it was I had intended to satirize. Clearly, if this reader couldn't tell where the satire was directed, there was a problem, and I should have kept my big mouth shut.
However, since some tricks are never learned by old dogs, once more into the breach:
Back in the middle of the last century, when the dominant critical stance informing the study of literature was something called New Criticism, it was fashionable to assert that the only thing that should concern the critic as well as the reader of a work of literature, indeed any piece of writing, was the work itself. This was in reaction to a lengthy period in which criticism was concerned with such things as the time in which the work was written, the impressions the readers reaped form the work, and indeed, most important to the present discussion, everything one could gather about the author of the work, his life, his psychological make-up, and all of the other things he'd written. The New Critics pointed out that none of these concerns, although they may have been interesting topics of investigation in and of themselves, was really relevant to understanding the work of literature or making judgments about it. The only relevant concern was the analysis of the work itself.
Article comments
1 - Brian Sorrell
I think that your satire is actually quite excellent and wholly successful. The fact that it elicited the response it got = success as satire. (I have written satires for this site as well, and some have been met with similar reaction.)
Additionally, your nuanced commentary on intention here is spot on. My favorite related example: ask any writer where the typos are in his draft. Though they certainly didn't *intend* to make spelling or grammatical errors, every draft has them. This demonstrates something important about authorial ownership and the limitations of intentions.
2 - Ted
Hi Jack. I find it to be very big of you to admit that a writer doesn't always succeed at his task, but I would still be very interested in knowing what it was you intended with the original piece.
Brian could chime in on this too since he thought you were successful.
A little help? Thanks.
3 - Alan Kurtz
Let me see if I have this straight. On December 4 you wrote "A Most Modest Proposal," which in reply to Roger's comment you confirmed was satire. The next day, commenter Ted queried, "If, as you say above, this was supposed to be a satire, what was the purpose of the piece? What are you trying to satirize?" This time you replied: "Ted raises an interesting question, which I am going to try not [sic] to answer in another essay which I am working on as we comment."
On December 7, BC published "Intentions: Good and Otherwise," wherein you fulfill your pledge "not [sic] to answer" Ted's "interesting question." Cutting to the chase, the longwinded point of this essay is that a literary work "must speak for itself; the author cannot speak for it." Thus we must excuse your failed satire on same-sex marriage because "while I know full well what I intended, the comments of those who took the trouble to read it suggest that I may not have had the foggiest notion of what I produced."
What a copout! Ted asked, fairly I think, what was the purpose of your "Most Modest Proposal." You frankly evaded the issue and then wrote 900 words justifying your evasion while nevertheless insisting that you "know full well" what you intended. Or perhaps "Intentions: Good and Otherwise" means to satirize us stupid readers who didn't get your previous Swiftian masterpiece. If the latter is the case, I suggest you're not half as clever as you think you are.
4 - Matan
PLEASE USE [SIC] PROPERLY OR NOT AT ALL. however, good call, alan.
5 - Dr Dreadful
Jack, the thing about your 'A Most Modest Proposal' was that in the debate over same-sex marriage, which has been as vigorous here on Blogcritics as it has in the wider world, the idea of doing away with marriage altogether has been seriously suggested by several writers and commenters as being the fairest solution.
They do have a point - as do you, whether it was the one you intended or not!
6 - Cindy
I don't quite see the two conditions as mutually exclusive. Having an understanding of the time, author's biography, etc. doesn't seem to discount the idea that the author can still write with one intention and achieve a different result and that analysis of the work itself is important.
I like your writing though, Jack. I will read your other article.
7 - Ted
Yet another person claims that Jack had a point. Would ANYONE care to specify exactly what point that may have been? This is amazing.
8 - roger nowosielski
Good point, Cindy. More often than not, the result of literary output is not exactly what the author had intended.
We'll talk later once my CDL test is over and done with.