Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 4:45 pm
Great post as always. That bit tripped me up, though. I can’t wrap my mind around how a book being a work of fiction isn’t meaningful in an ‘extra-textual’ way. It’s literally the foundation upon which the book itself is premised, whether or not the events are real, and how that relates to the reader. If a non-fiction book turns out to be fictional, see: A Million Little Pieces, it radically alters our relationship with the world it built, and the lessons it attempts to impart. Sure, one can still get some warm fuzzies if one is willing to ignore the Lie, but the Lie persists, inevitably and constantly, in the background of our consciousness.
I don't disagree with this. Perhaps I am just not communicating well. And I think I am only providing my own personal perspective, which is that scriptural texts (like the Bible and even the Book of Mormon) aren't written as histories or intended to be read in that way (especially in the context of history as we view it today). If I am reading the text as a history text, or as a work of fiction, in both cases, I am not going to find the text to be all that rewarding. And as a text, it isn't going to change me very much. But, if I am reading it as I would a text trying to make a theological point, or engage in a philosophical debate, then I find it to be very interesting indeed - and in engaging those topics with the text, my perception inevitably changes. This is why I used Nietzsche's novel as a comparison.
I was fascinated some years ago when I read this article in the
Smithsonian magazine (at the time it was my executive time reading material):
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cul ... -21416298/
It sometimes surprises me how I can forget where I put my glasses, and yet remember with some vivid recollections an article I first read 13 years ago and my response to it at the time ... In any case, as the article points out, there was a discovery (in 1987) of a time capsule of recordings discovered buried beneath the Paris Opera house. They are dated by a note describing their donation in 1907. And a description of the burial of this time capsule seems to be recorded in the 1910 publication of the
Phantom of the Opera, where it was the discovery of a skull during the excavation that triggers the narrative in that novel. Was there a skull? Was that part of the fiction imagined by Leroux? Leroux wrote: "It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opéra, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse." So the burial of the phonographic records seems to be a historical fact (the work is still a fictional novel). And would contemporaries of the publication of that novel remember this event (the burial of the phonographic records) and this then becomes, instead of a sort of bit of background noise that it is for us today, a point of contemporary events in which to place the novel and make it more realistic to its audience. In which case, the time and distance that has passed from them until now makes us less competent readers. This sort of thing goes both ways.
Believers have always had this problem with the Book of Mormon in that they have no context in which to place it. There is no way for them to cross that gap. And so we get artistic attempts that are clearly problematic (whether the text is historical or not). Friberg anyone? And then from there ... there was a Bagley cartoon (I think it was a Bagley) I read a long time ago with two kids walking through a temple visitor center, and the one says to the other: "You know what it takes to be a prophet? Faith, and steroids." I think that this is also the reason why the several attempts to place the Book of Mormon into a historical context have fared so poorly among Mormonism as a whole. Connected to a history of a real place in the past, it still does not provide a context that is relatable. Do we have to become experts in Mesoamerican history to understand the text? Perhaps it is enough for most people to simply believe that it can be done. I suspect this may be the reason why mainstream Christians often have such little interest in near eastern history with regard to the Bible.
While it is true that our beliefs about the text matter a great deal to the way that we read the text, I have found that from my postmodernist perspective, the historical aspects of the text and its production narrative do little to inform the ways in which I draw meaning from the text. My favorite description of the process of reading comes from Donald Davidson, who builds from the statement from Plato that I quoted earlier - this is from his essay "The Third Man" published in
Critical Inquiry 19 (Summer 1993):
Writing deviates startlingly from the original triangle. The object directly observed by both reader and writer is the text. It is produced by the writer, but in the case of literature the text is alienated from its creator by the lapse in time between when it is made and when it is read; the interaction between perceiving creatures that is the foundation of communication is lost. Plato marks the gulf between talking to a person and reading his words:
That's the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly analogous to painting. The painter's products stand before us as though they were alive: but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words: they seem to talk to you as though, they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, they go on telling you just the same thing for ever.
It's true that generally neither the text nor its author can respond to the reader. The interaction is of another sort. The text, unlike most objects, has meaning, and its meaning is the product of the interplay between the intentions of the writer to be understood in a certain way and the interpretation put on the writer's words by the reader. For the most part this interplay is, and is meant to be, routine, in the sense that the writer knows pretty well how he or she is apt to be understood, and the typical reader knows pretty' well how the writer intended to be understood. This is not always the case. Writers like Shakespeare, Dante, Joyce, Beckett strain our interpretive powers and thus force us into retrospective dialogue with the text, and through the text with the author. Authors may choose from many devices to rouse the reader to wrestle with the text: thought provoking puzzles, ambiguous authorial attitudes, plays within plays, stylistic references to other writers, autobiographical hints. But however it is done, and to whatever extent the reader's connivance is won, authors have contrived or commandeered an arena of ideas and assumptions large enough to contain both themselves and their audience, a common conceptual space.
Getting back to my comparison with the Bible, I think that there is a broad range of believers (and critics) views on what the Bible is, and how it should be read, and what meaning it should have. This occurs even though, as you suggest, the book is premised on being a historical record (whether it is the law given to Moses, or the words of the incarnation in Jesus Himself). With the Book of Mormon I don't see so much variation in belief, although I suspect that time (and distance) will help create a broader umbrella. The difference isn't that great. Many Mormons who have an inerrantist approach to the Book of Mormon try to take the same approach to the Bible (like the recent article we discussed about the Documentary Hypothesis). The discussion generally want to minimize the change that such an approach makes to the way we read. If there really was a 'Book of Moses' written by a Moses, then we have a historical grounding.
In a nod in your direction, I also recognize that much of what grounds the way that traditional LDS members view the Book of Mormon is the narrative of its production, which comes with an angel Moroni, claiming to be the final writer of the gold plates. It is harder to separate that narrative (of its production) from the historical claims of the text. Perhaps such a separation is even impossible within the LDS Church to the extent that might be necessary to discuss the text separate from such a historical narrative. But, until that happens, it seems to me that few will ever see the text as more than an artifact demonstrating evidence for the prophetic call of Joseph Smith. And the Book of Mormon can hold this role without anyone ever really needing to read the text, let alone to read it in a more than superficial way. Going back to the article about the time capsule, there is this really fascinating comment (at least to me):
To what extent must fact be blended with fancy to create the willing suspension of disbelief? For me, a novel that is not about place is not much of a novel. It is instead a memoir of thinly veiled or nonexistent people wandering through a desolate and unreal landscape.
This is something of a casual question (and not a philosophical discussion on reading and literature). Are we looking at two sides of the same coin? What are the necessary components to allow the text to be read as a literal history?
For me, it was when I stopped being overly concerned with the text as history (or fiction) and instead became interested in the text as an intention (as a speech act) that it became really interesting.
