Word: ellison
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...Ellison responded directly. "No...No conscious reference to Garvey is intended...
...reading those words, I felt as though Ellison had emerged from the grave and shot me with a semiautomatic...
...wrote my high school English teacher about the situation, and he responded that my words were significant, regardless of Ellison's original intentions. Once an author releases his book to the public, he said, the public is free to make any use of it. Somewhat mollified, I approached one of my Harvard professors, and she agreed. "It doesn't matter what Ellison may or may not have intended," she said. "It's what you think that counts...
...find the "any interpretation is valid" argument convincing. There are instances when, as Woody Allen memorably shows us, we simply are wrong. I recognize, of course, that Ellison didn't reject my argument in the way McLuhan rejected the professor's; while "no conscious reference to Garvey" may have been intended, Ellison did considerately leave the realm of his unconscious wide open to academic scrutiny. Unfortunately, I'm no psychoanalyst...
...this specific instance, I truly believe I was wrong. The argument may have been well-supported, but its fundamental premise was misguided. True, if Ellison hadn't opened his big mouth, my illusions of self-confidence probably would have lasted a little longer. But academic argument is not about self-confidence; it's about unearthing that thing we call Truth--that which...