In reading Lynn Bloom, “Textual Terror, Textual Power,” I was happy to be reminded of a problem I had with Scholes’s definition of criticism: the notion that criticism must be a negative examination. Bloom brings up Frey’s point in Beyond Literary Darwinism that “adversarial mode of criticism has dominated the most prestigious journal, PMLA, for at least the past twenty years” (78) and asks “What sparks of creativity can survive in this critical jungle?” (78). While Bloom is arguing for bringing creative writing into the classroom, I can’t help but think this criticism of criticism has other negative implications for both the field and students.

Forgive me as I regress our conversation to largely discussing Scholes here (I owe a post). For the most part, I enjoyed Textual Power. There were several ideas, in the earlier chapters especially, that I appreciated. Unfortunately, for me, his argumentative rhetoric in the last chapter left a sourness in my mind, one that flavors everything he has done up to that point. In this final chapter he seems to go off on a personal rant against Stanley Fish. He gets so caught up in discounting Fish that it seems like he is contradicting himself in his efforts to find fault with Fish’s approach.

Perhaps if I were more familiar with Fish’s argument (or if my brain were better able to absorb all the nuances of so many new ideas) I could understand Scholes’s frustration. But in all the ranting, I just don’t see a major, worthwhile difference between Fish’s idea of interpretive community and Scholes’s idea of cultural codes. Aren’t they both essentially arguing that interpretation is largely influenced by one’s knowledge, culture, and community values? Is saying “Cultural codes enable us to process verbal material” (27) all that different from Fish’s claim that “‘the thoughts an individual can think and the mental operations he can perform have their source in some or other interpretive community, he is as much the product of that community (acting as an extension of it) as the meanings it enables him to produce'” (155)?

Considering Blau’s discussion of how the common interpretations of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” changed over time, one of the ideas I appreciated in the earlier parts of Textual Power was Scholes’s addressing authorial incongruity. In the first few chapters, Scholes seems to promote accepting that division of ideas exists — not only within a group, but even within an individual: “It would be an astonishing thing if an extended body of written work did not reveal signs of divided consciousness — as if everyday life had no psychopathology, and civilization no discontents” (40).

And so I was surprised when Scholes finds it alarming that Stanley Fish would argue for the cohesiveness of a group, while still acknowledging that “‘Members of different communities will disagree.'” (155) It seems reasonable to allow Fish to define an interpretive community as one that acts to come to agreement, to agree on the principles that govern debate, while not actually resolving all disagreements.

In arguing against Fish, he also seems to contradict his earlier conclusion that in terms of literary interpretation, collective judgment is superior to personal judgment. In the earlier sections he promotes the idea that “criticism is not a matter of personal preference but of collective judgment.” (35) However, in attacking Fish he promotes the value of the individual difference in interpretation:

“Different, even conflicting, assumptions may preside over any reading of a single text by a single person. It is in fact these very differences — differences within the reader, who is never a unified member of a single unified group — it is these very differences that create the space in which the reader exercises a measure of interpretive freedom.” (154)

My frustration is mainly with Scholes’s rhetorical choice to argue so heatedly with Fish. As a reader, one who is not familiar with the ongoing dialogue Scholes is engaged in, I would have much preferred if Scholes had — instead of calling Fish dangerous for being partly accurate — acknowledged where Fish’s ideas were accurate, where their ideas were similar, and then shown me where they diverge.