Volume 26, Number 10 · June 14, 1979
Carnal Knowledge
By E.D. Hirsch
The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative
by Frank Kermode
Harvard University Press, 169 pp., $10.00
This suggestive book on the nature of interpretation, based on Frank Kermode's recent Norton lectures, draws on his reading of works by Kafka, Henry Green, Thomas Pynchon, and James Joyce, as well as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. From his examination of these and other texts Kermode learnedly and gracefully discusses a variety of abstract questions including the theory of interpretation (hermeneutics), New Testament exegesis, structuralism, and the theory of narrative. But what succeeds as a lecture does not always work in a book. Despite Kermode's disarming concession that his approach is unsystematic, and despite the sharpness of his isolated apercus, I find his book to be inadequately thought out, particularly in its theoretical arguments. I am especially troubled by Kermode's uncritical modernism (i.e., his view that the latest ideas are the most interesting), and his certainty that it is naïve to seek the correct, or definitive, interpretation of any text. But before I expand on my criticisms I should describe the intellectual background to Kermode's book.
Review, 4094 words
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