by David Lodge
“To understand a message is to decode it. Language is a code. But every decoding is another encoding. If you say something to me I check that I have understood your message by saying it back to you in my own words, that is, different words from the ones you used, for if I repeat your own words exactly you will doubt whether I have really understood you. But if I use my words it follows that I have changed your meaning, however slightly; and even if I were, deviantly, to indicate my comprehension by repeating back to you your own unaltered words, that is no guarantee that I have duplicated your meaning in my head, because I bring a different experience of language, literature, and non-verbal reality to those words, therefore they mean something different to me from what they mean to you. And if you think I have not understood the meaning of your message, you do not simply repeat it in the same words, you try to explain it in different words, different from the ones you used originally; but then the it is no longer the it that you started with. And for that matter, you are not the you that you started with. Time has moved on since you opened your mouth to speak, the molecules in your body have changed, what you intended to say has been superseded by what you did say, and that has already become part of your personal history, imperfectly remembered. Conversation is like playing tennis with a ball made of Krazy Putty that keeps coming back over the net in a different shape.
“Reading, of course, is different from conversation: It is more passive in the sense that we can’t interact with the text, we can’t affect the development of the text by our own words, since the text’s words are already given. That is what perhaps encourages the quest for interpretation. If the words are fixed once and for all, on the page, may not their meaning be fixed also? Not so, because the same axiom, every decoding is another encoding, applies to literary criticism even more stringently than it does to ordinary spoken discourse. In ordinary spoken discourse, the endless cycle of encoding-decoding-encoding may be terminated by an action, as when for instance I say, ‘The door is open,’ and you say, ‘Do you mean you would like me to shut it?’ and I say, ‘If you don’t mind,’ and you shut the door—we may be satisfied that at a certain level my meaning has been understood. But if the literary text says, ‘The door was open,’ I cannot ask the text what it means by saying that the door was open, I can only speculate about the significance of that door—opened by what agency, leading to what discovery, mystery, goal? The tennis analogy will not do for the activity of reading—it is not a to-and-fro process, but an endless, tantalising leading on, a flirtation without consummation, or if there is consummation, it is solitary, masturbatory. [Here the audience grew restive.] The reader plays with himself as the text plays upon him, plays upon his curiosity, desire, as a striptease dancer plays upon her audience’s curiosity and desire.
“Now, as some of you know, I come from a city notorious for its bars and nightclubs featuring topless and bottomless dancers. I am told—I have not personally patronized these places, but I am told on the authority of no less a person than your host at this conference, my old friend Philip Swallow, who has patronized them, [here several members of the audience turned in their seats to stare and grin at Philip Swallow, who blushed to the roots of his silver-grey hair] that the girls take off all their clothes before they commence dancing in front of the customers. This is not striptease, it is all strip and no tease, it is the terpsichorean equivalent of the hermeneutic fallacy of a recuperable meaning, which claims that if we remove the clothing of its rhetoric from a literary text we discover the bare facts it is trying to communicate. The classical tradition of striptease, however, which goes back to Salome’s dance of the seven veils and beyond, and which survives in a debased form in the dives of your Soho, offers a valid metaphor for the activity of reading. The dancer teases the audience, as the text teases its readers, with the promise of an ultimate revelation that is infinitely postponed. Veil after veil, garment after garment, is removed, but it is the delay in the stripping that makes it exciting, not the stripping itself; because no sooner has one secret been revealed than we lose interest in it and crave another. When we have seen the girl’s underwear we want to see her body, when we have seen her breasts we want to see her buttocks, and when we have seen her buttocks we want to see her pubis, and when we see her pubis, the dance ends—but is our curiosity and desire satisfied? Of course not. The vagina remains hidden within the girl’s body, shaded by her pubic hair, and even if she were to spread her legs before us [at this point several ladies in the audience noisily departed] it would still not satisfy the curiosity and desire set in motion by the stripping. Staring into that orifice we find that we have somehow overshot the goal of our quest, gone beyond pleasure in contemplated beauty; gazing into the womb we are returned to the mystery of our own origins. Just so in reading. The attempt to peer into the very core of a text, to possess once and for all its meaning, is vain—it is only ourselves that we find there, not the work itself. Freud said that obsessive reading (and I suppose that most of us in this room must be regarded as compulsive readers)—that obsessive reading is the displaced expression of a desire to see the mother’s genitals [here a young man in the audience fainted and was carried out] but the point of the remark, which may not have been entirely appreciated by Freud himself, lies precisely in the concept of displacement. To read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of the text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of striving to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing.”
Morris Zapp went on to illustrate his thesis with a number of passages from classic English and American literature. When he sat down, there was scattered and uneven applause.
“The floor is now open for discussion,” said Rupert Sutcliffe, surveying the audience apprehensively over the rims of his glasses. “Are there any questions or comments?”
There was a long silence. Then Philip Swallow stood up. “I have listened to your paper with great interest, Morris,” he said. “Great interest. Your mind has lost none of its sharpness since we first met. But I am sorry to see that in the intervening years you have succumbed to the virus of structuralism.”
“I wouldn’t call myself a structuralist,” Morris Zapp interrupted, “A post-structuralist, perhaps.”
Philip Swallow made a gesture implying impatience with such subtle distinctions. “I refer to that fundamental scepticism about the possibility of achieving certainty about anything, which I associate with the mischievous influence of Continental theorizing. There was a time when reading was a comparatively simple matter, something you learned to do in primary school. Now it seems to be some kind of arcane mystery, into which only a small élite have been initiated. I have been reading books for their meaning all my life—or at least that is what I have always thought I was doing. Apparently I was mistaken.”
“You weren’t mistaken about what you were trying to do,” said Morris Zapp, relighting his cigar, “you were mistaken in trying to do it.”
“I have just one question,” said Philip Swallow. “It is this: what, with the greatest respect, is the point of our discussing your paper if, according to your own theory, we should not be discussing what you actually said at all, but discussing some imperfect memory or subjective interpretation of what you said?”
“There is no point,” said Morris Zapp blithely. “If by point you mean the hope of arriving at some certain truth. But when did you ever discover that in a question-and-discussion session? Be honest, have you ever been to a lecture or seminar at the end of which you could have found two people present who could agree on the simplest précis of what had been said?”
“Then what in God’s name is the point of it all?” cried Philip Swallow, throwing his hands into the air.
“The point, of course, is to uphold the institution of academic literary studies. We maintain our position in society by publicly performing a certain ri
tual, just like any other group of workers in the realm of discourse—lawyers, politicians, journalists. And as it looks as if we have done our duty for today, shall we all adjourn for a drink?”
“Tea, I’m afraid it will have to be,” said Rupert Sutcliffe, clutching with relief this invitation to bring the proceedings to a speedy close. “Thank you very much for a most, er, stimulating and, ah, suggestive lecture.”
“‘Suggestive and stimulating’—the old fellow hit the nail on the head,” said Persse to Angelica as they filed out of the lecture room. “Does your mother know you’re away out listening to that sort of language?”
“I thought it was interesting,” said Angelica. “Of course, it all goes back to Peirce.”
“Me?”
“Peirce. Another variant spelling of your name. He was an American philosopher. He wrote somewhere about the impossibility of stripping the veils of representation from meaning. And that was before the First World War.”
“Was it, indeed? You’re a remarkably well-read young woman, Angelica, do you know that? Where were you educated at all?”
“Oh, various places,” she said vaguely. “Mainly England and America.”
They passed Rupert Sutcliffe and Philip Swallow in the corridor, in urgent consultation with Bob Busby, apparently about theatre tickets. “Are you going to the Repertory Theatre tonight?” said Angelica.
“I didn’t put down to go. It didn’t say on the form what the play was.”
“I believe it’s Lear.”
“Are you going, then?” Persse asked anxiously. “What about my poem?”
“Your poem? Oh dear, I forgot. Ten o’clock on the top floor, wasn’t it? I’ll try and get back promptly. Professor Dempsey is taking me in his car, so that will save time.”
“Dempsey? You want to be careful of that fellow, you know. He preys on young women like yourself. He told me so.”
Angelica laughed. “I can take care of myself.”
They found Morris Zapp drinking tea alone in the common room, the other conferees having left a kind of cordon sanitaire around him. Angelica went boldly up to the American.
“Professor Zapp, I did so enjoy your lecture,” she said, with a greater degree of enthusiasm than Persse had expected or could, indeed, bring himself to approve.
“Well, thank you, Al,” said Morris Zapp. “I certainly enjoyed giving it. I seem to have offended the natives, though.”
“I’m working on the subject of romance for my doctorate,” said Angelica, “and it seemed to me that a lot of what you were saying applied very well to romance.”
“Naturally,” said Morris Zapp. “It applies to everything.”
“I mean, the idea of romance as narrative striptease, the endless leading on of the reader, a repeated postponement of an ultimate revelation which never comes—or, when it does, terminates the pleasure of the text…”
“Exactly,” said Morris Zapp.
“And there’s even a good deal of actual striptease in the romances.”
“There is?” said Morris Zapp. “Yes, I guess there is.”
“Ariosto’s heroines for instance, are always losing their clothes and being gloated over by the heroes who rescue them.”
“It’s a long time since I read Ariosto,” said Morris Zapp.
“And of course, The Faerie Queene—the two girls in the fountain in the Bower of Blisse…”
“I must look at that again,” said Morris Zapp.
“Then there’s Madeline undressing under the gaze of Porphyro in ‘St. Agnes’ Eve.’”
“Right, ‘St. Agnes’ Eve.’”
“Geraldine in ‘Christabel.’”
“—‘Christabel’—”
At this point Philip Swallow came bustling up. “Morris, I hope you didn’t mind my having a go at you just now—”
“Of course not, Philip. Vive le sport.”
“Only nobody else seemed inclined to speak, and I am very concerned about these matters, I really think the subject is in a state of crisis—” He broke off, as Angelica politely backed away. “Oh, I’m sorry, have I interrupted something?”
“It’s quite all right, we’ve finished,” said Angelica. “Thank you very much, Professor Zapp, you’ve been most helpful.”
“Any time, Al.”
“Actually, you know, my name is Angelica,” she smiled.
“Well, I thought Al must be short for something,” said Morris Zapp. “Let me know if I can give you any more help.”
“He didn’t give you any help at all,” said Persse indignantly, as they helped themselves to tea and biscuits. “You provided the ideas and the examples.”
“Well, his lecture provided the stimulus.”
“You told me he cribbed it all from the other fellow, my namesake.”
“I didn’t say he cribbed it, silly. Just that Peirce had the same idea.”
“Why didn’t you tell Zapp that?”
“You have to treat these professors carefully, Persse,” said Angelica, with a sly smile. “You have to flatter them a bit.”
“Ah, Angelica!” A bright blue suit interposed itself between them. “I’d like to discuss that very interesting idea of Jakobson’s you mentioned this morning,” said Robin Dempsey. “We can’t allow McGarrigle to monopolize you for the duration of the conference.”
“I need to see Dr. Busby, anyway,” said Persse, retiring with dignity.
He found Bob Busby in the conference office. A young man from London University, whom Persse had overheard making the remark about generals deserting their armies at the coffee break that morning, was waving a theatre ticket under Busby’s nose.
“Are you trying to tell me that this ticket isn’t for Lear after all?” he was saying.
“Well, unfortunately, the Rep has postponed the opening of King Lear,” said Busby apologetically. “And extended the run of the Christmas pantomime.”
“Pantomime? Pantomime?”
“It’s the only production in the whole year that makes a profit, you can’t really blame them,” said Busby. “Puss in Boots. I believe it’s very good.”
“Jesus wept,” said the young man. “Is there any chance of getting my money back on the ticket?”
“I’m afraid it’s too late now,” said Busby.
“I’ll buy it,” said Persse.
“I say, will you really?” said the young man turning round. “It costs two pounds fifty. You can have it for two quid.”
“Thanks,” said Persse, handing over the money.
“Don’t go telling everybody it’s Puss in Boots,” Busby pleaded. “I’m making out it’s a sort of mystery trip.”
“It’s a mystery to me,” said the young man, “why any of us came to this Godforsaken hole in the first place.”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” said Busby. “It’s very central.”
“Central to what?”
Bob Busby frowned reflectively. “Well, since they opened the M50 I can get to Tintern Abbey, door to door, in ninety-five minutes.”
“Go there often, do you?” said the young man. He fingered Persse’s pound notes speculatively. “Is there a good fish-and-chip shop near here? I’m starving. Haven’t been able to eat a thing since I arrived.”
“There’s a Chinese takeaway at the second traffic lights on the London Road,” said Bob Busby. “I’m sorry that you’re not enjoying the food. Still, there’s always tomorrow night to look forward to.”
“What happens tomorrow night?”
“A medieval banquet!” said Busby, beaming with pride.
“I can hardly wait,” said the young man, as he left.
“I thought it would make a rather nice climax to the conference,” said Bob Busby to Persse. “We’re having an outside firm in to supervise the catering and provide the entertainment. There’ll be mead, and minstrels and”—he rubbed his hands together in anticipatory glee—“wenches.”
“My word,” said Persse. “Life runs very high in Rummidge, surely. By th
e way, do you have a streetplan of the city? There’s an aunty of mine living here, and I ought to call on her. The address is Gittings Road.”
“Why, that’s not far from here!” Busby exclaimed. “Walking distance. I’ll draw you a map.”
…
Following Busby’s directions, Persse left the campus, walked through some quiet residential streets lined with large, handsome houses, their snowy drives scored by the tyre tracks of Rovers and Jaguars; crossed a busy thoroughfare, where buses and lorries had churned the snow into furrows of black slush; and penetrated a region of older and less well-groomed property. After a few minutes he became aware of a figure slipping and sliding on the pavement ahead of him, crowned by a familiar deerstalker.
“Hallo, Professor Zapp,” he said, drawing level. “Are you taking a stroll?”
“Oh, hi, Percy. No, I’m on my way to visit my old landlord. I spent six months in this place, you know, ten years ago. I even thought of staying here once. I must have been out of my mind. Do you know it well?”
“I’ve never been here before, but I have an aunty living here. Not a real aunty, but related through cousins. My mother said to be sure to look her up. I’m on my way now.”
“A duty call, huh? I take a right here.”
Persse consulted his map. “So do I.”
“How d’you like Rummidge, then?”
“There are too many streetlights.”
“Come again?”
“You can’t see the stars properly at night, because of all the streetlights,” said Persse.
“Yeah, and there are a few other disadvantages I could tell you about,” said Morris Zapp. “Like not a single restaurant you would take your worst enemy to, four different kinds of electric socket in every room, hotel bedrooms that freeze your eyebrows to the pillows, and disc jockeys that deserve to have their windpipes slit. I can’t say that the absence of stars bugged me all that much.”
“Even the moon seems dimmer than at home,” said Persse.