Reviews

102 Links & Letters 2, 1995 Reviews author is portraying. The simple language Calvino uses to convey such delicate and deep rnatters turn the book into an attractive theoretical and practica1 text. Also. the wav his assurn~tions are exemplifiéd with'texts frorn ;he past and the present is very clarifying. By doing so, he backs his areuments and hel~s the reader V to visualize the rnessage, providing this work on literary theory -usually a grayish subiectwith an unconventional. livelv ' I flavour. Bretvity and quality are the two key adjectives to describe this book. On the whole, it is a balanced work thanks to the contrast and complementation benveen ideas and language, past and present, theory and practice. 1 think al1 these characteristics contribute to making the access to literature easier for . . everybody. Lídia Schibi García Universitat Autbnorna de Barcelona WAYNE C. BOOTH. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1988. 557 pages. A reader whio is permanently open to an exchanee of ideas and a revision of values througYh fiction: such is the ideal after which, according to Wayne C. Booth, we should try to fashion ourselves if we are to take füll advantage of our positions as consumers of literature. For what is being proposed in professor Booth's latest book, The Company We Keep, is nothing less than the recovery of the old idea of literature as valilable instruction. which has been neglected in literary studies for more than thirtv vears. , , Doubtless there are specific reasons for that neglect, and Booth takes most of them into account at the very outset of his book. The ~rejection of inquiry into valuesn, as he puts it, that has been brought along by various developrnents of literary criticism (with the notorious exception of Marxisrn, where nevertheless the ethicai has sornetirnes been bracketed in favour of the politicai, or has been considered synonymous with it) is succintly but didactically exarnined in the first pages, in a lively description of the most abstract theorizations of art. But it is in the consideration of an alternative form of dicussion on books, to which the reader would be able to bring along hislher own personal values and opinions, that this book makes its most important contribution. Thus Booth rnakes substantial use of a metaphor that has been long left unused in critica1 practice, but which was one of the key figures in the hurnanist discourse on books for more than four centuries: the image of the book as a friend to the reader. The many gifts that such friends may bring to us are analyzed and described in detail: otherness (the approach to a different culture or to a set ofworldviews that are different frorn ours), intensity, variety, enjoyment. ((Implied author)) is the term ernployed by Booth here: for he takes into accounr the way in which the very notion of authorship has been relativized in the last decades, and thus distinguishes between the «author» that the rhetoric of the book implies and the actual writer (neither of them is to be confüsed, rnoreover, with the narrative voice, which may point to values which do not coincide with those that the implied author wants to promote). However, the final decision to integrate these values or to reject them, to accept the friendship that the book offers or to dismiss it will rest solely in the reader's hands. Booth does not see the interpretive act as the coiiective choice of some nebulous ((interpretive community)), but as the result of a serious and responsible personal investigation carried out by the reader. And it is there, in the field of per- Reviews l ~inks & Letters 2, 1995 103 sonal decisions, that the stakes of ethical criticisrn are decided. It is to the constitution of the rnodel of «critica1 selb that he proposes, therefore, that rnost of the book is dedicated. But even though the acceptance or rejection of each of these forrns of «friendship» is only the decision of the individual reader, the investigation of the different values that are prornoted by the potential friends -booksrnust not necessarily be done by that reader done. The process of discussion and exploration of books is thus best carried out as a cornrnon enterprise, which rnay lead the reader to a re-evaluation of hislher opinions on specific fictions, and thus to a re-evaluation of the influence that these fictions rnay have on hirnlher. The conclusions that are reached thus will be the result of what Booth calls «coduction»: that is, the process of cornrnon interchange and discussion that leads to a renewed awareness of the issues and ethical connotations of specific fictions. Such a project cannot be brought about without a careful exarnination of the figural language that is predorninant in each of the works that we deal with; and here Booth calls our attention to the predorninant role of rnetaphor both in the construction of philosophical concepts and in «literary» language. He is perfectly aware, as the classical rhetoricians were, of the erninently persuasive power of literary figures and of their use as the basis of every forrn of conceptual thought. Accordingly, he discusses the power of what he names «weapon» rnetaphors: that is, the rnetaphors the role of which is to persuade as rnuch as to describe, or those where their function as elernents of conceptualization overlaps with their role as persuasive devices. Several heavily rnetaphoric passages frorn the writings of novelists such as Norrnan Mailer or politicians such as Ronald Reagan are discussed here, with surprising and often cornic results, and the key point towards which the author gently leads us i$ thus slowly but firrnly established: the sustained use of these rnetaphors in the discourses to which they belong irnplies the possibility of ideal, «rnetaphorical» worlds which would be the rnost appropriate context for thern, and which the reader is forced to irnagine, or to presuppose, through hislher encounter with the texts or fictions in which thev are contained. The careful reader will thus try to conceptualize, as closely as possible, the kind of «ideal world» that the author of the book that is being read offers to hirnlher. After that identification has been rnade comes the rnornent of ethical decision: and it is here, in the description of the «self» that learns to rnake well-inforrned, serious ethical decisions about books, that Booth is able to rnake a rnost fruitful and creative difference in our consideration of the work of the reader. One of the rnain airns of M. Bakhtin's theorv of dialogisrn is the " decentration of rnonologisrn, the relativization of all discourse through the analysis of its interaction with al1 the other discourse and forrns of language with which it is interrelated. Booth suggests that the activity of the ethical critic should be sirnilarly subject to a perrnanent process of decentration. If the notion of «dialogue» has to be taken seriously at d, then this irnplies a radical questioning of the traditiondv assumed idea of a stable. fullv , , f~ed self, continuously identical to itselfi «Even those who insist on thinking of O thernselves as individuals are in fact polyphonic and to sorne degree ((heteroglos- - - sic)) -experiencing voice against voice in what rnay seern incompatible mixtures.)) (p. 238). The only kind of valid dialogue, Booth asserts, is the one in which there is any possibility of having the assumptions and opinions of the participants open to transforrnation and externa1 iñfluence. If the reader learns not to forsake hislher own ethical positioning, but be- 104 Links & Letters 2, 1995 Reviews comes used to being alert to the limits of u that positioning, its interaction with other forms of discourse and its interaction with them, an essential modification of hislher intellectual habits will take place. The same basic principles that helshe brings along to the intercourse with books will remain, but no longer as immutable, absolute principles; they will be flexibilized and respond, in various ways, to the challenge 1:hat the experience of reading offers to them, being inevitably transformed in the process. Does this involve an abandonment of serious, coherent commitment to one's own moral positionings? Not necessarily: «While 1 have given up any notion of being a private individual or «authentic» self, 1 have not lost anything in the giving up. If each of my roles engages the other roles fully and responsibly, if 1 do not and cannot cast off my unique collection of roles at will, whv should 1 be anxious about the process of adding and substracting roles?)) (p. 259). What we have here is an abandonnient of critical rigidity and a willingness to consider seriously the arguments of others. Only then will a critical process take place that responds seriously and responsibly to ethical issues. The activitv of the ethical reader appears thus to be placed in a position of constant negotiation between two extreme positions. On the one hand, a serious commitment to hislher own ethical standards, on ithe other, a constant openness to the standards of others, and a willingness to alter hisl her original position if necessary. The consequences of such a movement are much more far-reaching u than it might seem at first sight. Booth is in fact inviting the reader to put al1 ethical positionings, including hislher own, under the sign of provisionality. The basic assumption of an unstable, ever-shifting self, has to be taken seriously: critical dialogue requires the reader to bracket hislher own assumptions in order to consider seriously the argumentation of others. Surely some of the conclusions of Booth's readings of Rabelais and Lawrence (of his approval of the latter and dismissal of the former on purely ethical grounds); but if this is so, it is because he does not intend to present these readings as the result of some scho- ' larly investigation; only as the result of a personal confrontation with the books written by these authors. This book does not work, after all, towards an ethics of theory or of criticism; only towards an ethics of the reading of fiction. And by doing thus it opens a whole new field of critical investigation: for should we not apply the same techniques that Booth proposes to the various enterprises of literary criticism? The various schools of theory, as Booth adequately points out on several occasions, offer us also several arrays of implied values, and it will be our personal-not collectiveresponsibility to decide on what occasions, and for what purposes, we make use of them. If we finally begin to be able to do so, it will no doubt be thanks to the insights brought about by the critics who have not neglected the overd importante of ethicsas a field of thought and action which is prior even to political decisionsand, in part at least, by Wayne Booth's timely essay. Joan Curbet Soler Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona