Penny Hero (dot) Net

Wonderful complex ambiguity in Henry James’ stuff. My freshman year, I read Daisy Miller and started to write a cyber-punk “version” of that story (very bad. don’t ask for a copy) because I was so impressed with the skill involved in building and creating doubt, questioning, and a fundamental inability to know the truth of the story.

In Gavin’s words, Ahern’s a ninja because he says stuff like “If any of you say ‘the author leaves it up to the reader to decide the truth’ in one of your papers, I’ll smack you.” I know he was trying to drive home that explanations are to be found in the text but the same can be applied to pieces where explanations are deliberately left out, and must be accepted that way.

I like writers who refuse to anchor their work in some kind of logic. Not because I “don’t want to know”, but because I think complexity and subjectivity should be more celebrated. It’s a better representation of the “human condition” (*gags*) than trying to rationalize and attribute X to an either/or kind of “enlightened” understanding.

Tim O’Brien’s In The Lake of the Woods is also a book I’d bear children for.

For the record, I’m on chapter 8 of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.