What the hell is Goldstein talking about?

Holiday weekends are weird in the blogosphere. The more functional members of our community get day passes, while we hardened cases are left to run the asylum. So, what did we fight about while you guys were off barbecuing, jet skiing, petition circulatin', dissertation drafting, or working overtime? Philosophy of language!

I feel like I'm standing knee deep in empty beer cans and used condoms, trying to explain what the hell happened over the weekend.

It all started when Nate made fun of Jeff Goldstein for not knowing who painted the Mona Lisa.

Nate's target was footnote twenty of Goldstein's “You can't spell history without the ‘story’: History and Memory in the Fictive and Imaginary” (punctuation Goldstein's).

20. Would we, for instance, argue that MacBeth, printed in The Riverside Shakespeare, is a different text from MacBeth printed in a Penguin edition? Suppose that each is printed in a different typeface. The marks, under these circumstances, have been altered, but the signs, we assume, have remained the same. What allows us to make this claim for verbal texts? If I were, for instance, to move the Mona Lisa's eyes closer together, no one presumably would claim that I haven't altered the composition of the Mona Lisa in some way. What is it, then, that makes the verbal text different in this regard from the non-verbal or iconographical text? In both instances, intended marks have been altered. But the difference is that in the case of verbal texts, the marks themselves are not what we consider important. What we do consider important are the signs— the marks plus their signifieds. And what makes these marks signs to begin with is the intention to use them as such. My revision of the Mona Lisa certainly has a "meaning"—and it was clearly intentional. But my meaning is different from the meaning of the original composition, the meaning intended by its producer Michelangelo. [Emphasis added.]

Some of us a good laugh, including Jane Hamsher, Thersites, and eventually Atrios.

Nate's a mild-mannered philosophy blogger who was shocked when Jeff fired back with this. He was probably utterly perplexed when Goldstein accused Thersites of being drunk. (Don't worry Nate, that's SOP for Goldstein.)

I gather that things got really ugly after I went to bed. It's hard to piece together what happened overnight because of all the subsequent deletions and repostings, but it appears that Jeff or one of his commenters dug up a bunch of personal details about Thersites, his wife, and their kid and posted that information in a thread.

Evidently, an anonymous Goldstein supporter was so worked up that he told Thersites that his two-year-old had cocksucking lips. [Correction: Turns out the cocksucking insinuations preceded the meaning of meaning dustup. My bad. I'm told that while I left the house to see Al Gore's movie, JG reposted Thersites' personal info on his blog. His bad.]

On the morning after, Goldstein surveys the damage.

You probably thinking, wow, that must have been some footnote.

As far as that footnote goes, Jeff is making a pretty straightforward point: Written language is a shared code for expressing thoughts. Readers of English tacitly understand which variations are important to the meaning of sentences. For example, we know that word order is very important to meaning. "The cat is on the mat" means something very different than "The mat is on the cat." Whereas, the meaning of "The cat is on the mat." doesn't change if I reset it in Helvetica or Times New Roman. I can write it in red, double the point size, or sculpt the letters out of clay without changing the meaning of the sentence. It's still about some cat on some mat. Arguably, you can even translate that sentence into a different language without changing the meaning. "Le chat est sur le tapis."="The cat is on the mat." (These are all philosophically loaded assertions, but they're hardly implausible or unusual for philosophers or lay people.)

Codes have rules for distinguishing signal from noise. You can deliver the same message in Morse code with a telegraph, a kazoo, or bursts of yodeling. Someone who knows Morse code also knows that the differences in timbre don't carry any conventionalized differences in meaning. So, they'll get the same message as long as they can discern the information-bearing features of the transmission--the pattern of long and short pulses.

In the footnote, Jeff's point is that paintings don't consist of conventionally agreed-upon codes. So, all the properties of a painting are potentially relevant to its "meaning." He's sloppy to imply that the Mona Lisa has a meaning in the same sense that a declarative sentence does. However, I think that if you construe his point charitably, it's not crazy.

I don't want to tell the literary types their business, but isn't it also sloppy to say that different publisher's editions of Shakespeare's plays have the exact same meaning? Rival scholarly editions of Shakespeare aren't word-for-word duplicates of each other. These editions are shaped by editors' judgments about how to reconcile inconsistent contemporary manuscripts, which modern spelling system to impose (if any), and so on. A better example would have been the same manuscript printed in two different fonts.

Still, it would be a mistake to make too much of that footnote. It's actually the best part of the paper.

The gist of the paper as a whole is this: The only legitimate way to analyze literature is to figure out the author's original intent. I'm not a literary theory type, but Jeff's rule seems absurdly strict and arbitrary.

There are many interesting debates within the philosophy of language about the relationship between the speaker's intentions and the meanings of his or her utterances. However, these aren't really germane to Jeff's argument. He just likes to name drop.

I agree that it would be hard to have an interesting discussion about literature without the background assumption that the work had an author who had some intentions. Maybe s/he wanted to tell gripping story, represent reality, share fantasy, make readers laugh, express feelings, evoke emotions, explore the untapped potential of a genre, react to other works of art, advance a moral argument, get paid, get laid, etc., etc.

Some artists are more calculating than others. Creators have different levels of insight into their craft. Presumably, authors sometimes have intentions that they fail to convey. We know that some works are even more revealing than the author intended. For example, racist themes and assumptions crop up in many works of literature. We can ask whether the author intended to be racist (i.e., whether s/he meant the racially charged content as a putdown, or as a means of legitimizing the social hierarchy, or as propaganda, or whatever). However, even when there's no evidence of intent, can also ask what cultural presuppositions may have informed the author's attitudes, and how a popular work of art with racist themes might have legitimized or perpetuated certain stereotypes.

Jeff allows that the author's unconscious/subconscious intentions are also legitimate objects of literary study. It's hard enough to interpret conscious, overt speech acts. How are you supposed to rigorously reconstruct the unconscious/subconscious motives of an author from a text? Meaning is underdetermined at the best of times. What justification do you have for saying that an author had one unvoiced, unreflective "intention" rather than another? There are always going to be hordes of hypotheses that explain the available evidence equally well.

If you allow for subconscious and unconscious intentions, you allow for the multiplicity of interpretations that intent purists are seeking to avoid. If someone who's strict about authorial intent is willing to entertain theories about the subconscious motives of a creator (which presumably could be at odds with the conscious motives, or internally inconsistent), they're opening the door to all socially, politically, and psychodynamically informed criticism that they were trying to rule out by being authorial intent purists.

It is just a mistake to assume that every aspect of a novel or a play that a reader might imbue with meaning necessarily reflects a straightforwardly interpretable intent by the artist. Unlike the isolated sentences that philosophers of language tinker with, works of literature are aesthetic objects that can't be fruitfully analyzed simply by elucidating the truth conditions of the sentences they contain.

Ultimately, I don't see an a priori reason to assume that all interesting literary questions can be answered by appeal to the author's intentions. In most cases, just there isn't enough evidence. Even in cases where there's a lot of evidence, it's almost impossible to formulate precise hypotheses or test competing claims about an author's intent. So, unless we're prepared to give up on literary analysis altogether, we've got to explain how we can say interesting things about stories/texts without presupposing that we can know exactly what the author intended.

Notwithstanding the fair point raised in the footnote, Jeff's larger argument fails because literary texts are in fact more like paintings and less like the single-sentence examples that most analytic philosophers of language like to model. When you're grappling with a work in full, there is no single consensual storytelling code that enables a reader to distill the author's intent into a series of truth functional claims.

Literary analysis shouldn't be reduced to a guessing-game about what the author intended. You can't distill a single authoritative authorial position paper from a work of art.

Comments

[aeroman]

There's a concept that I imagine most folks in academia have heard called "pulling up a chair versus building a ladder." Basically, the metaphors are supposed to represent two distinct approaches entry-level academics take to the Biq Academic Questions, specifically if they decide to work their way up to the big questions by building a ladder of narrow but meaningful sub-inquiries, or if they feel entitled to simply pull up a chair to the discussion, despite the fact that it's already well-populated by more established speakers.

By joining into the goofy intentionalim fray, Goldstein wasn't just pulling up a chair, he was pulling up a chair to a table where any food worth eating had already been eaten and all that was left was a bunch of folks on their fifth nightcap, pissing off the other diners with their noise. Goldstein's entire point is that when you expand your inquiry beyond intent, that should be properly considered generative, whereas when you focus only on intent, that shouldn't. Well, ok. If that's where he wants to draw his meaningless line in the sand, he can go right ahead. But it's a silly point in a silly debate. I'm not too surprised that the combination of that and his knee-jerk forced-macho lewdness stuck Goldstein in the home and out of the academy right quick.

[jdfeminist]

Perhaps I'm too many years into my self-imposed exile from academe but it seems simpler to me. If we're just to address this as simply and narrowly as possible: 1. Read Saussure (as many times as you need to, don't be scared) until you understand signifiers, signifieds and signs, 2. Then read Barthes and get over it.

I wish I could remember the actual cite for this (might have been The New Yorker) but many years ago, a young and admiring journalist interviewed J.D. Salinger. The journalist went on at length about metaphors and symbols Salinger used. Salinger's (pardon the pun) authoritative response? Essentially, "Gee, wish I'd thought of that when I was writing it."

I'm with Barthes.

[Gary Sugar]

I think the artist's intention is relevant to whether a work of art should be considered successful. But I don't think the artist's intention is necessarily relevant to whether it should be called beautiful, or interesting, or profound.

[Pablo]

It's hard to piece together what happened overnight, but it appears that Jeff Goldstein or one of his commenters dug up a bunch of personal details about Therasites, his wife, and their kid and posted that information in a thread. An anonymous Goldstein supporter was so worked up by this point that he told Therasites that his two-year-old had cocksucking lips.

It's not hard if you can read, Lindsey. This version of events is complete bullshit, and you're a liar for relating it.

I had been given the impression that you might not be yet another hopeless delusional, but I was clearly mistaken.

I feel like I'm standing knee deep in empty beer cans and used condoms, trying to explain what the hell happened over the weekend.

You get that a lot, don't you?

Such is the state of the Left.

[Big Bang Hunter]

"An anonymous Goldstein supporter was so worked up by this point that he told Therasites that his two-year-old had cocksucking lips."

- Thats a pretty serious charge. Do you have the posters IP addy. A low life that would bring anyones child into a blog debate, and in such a vile manner, needs to be "outed".

[Jeff G]

You have just about everything wrong here, from the timeline of events to the suggestion that one of my commenters made the offending remark about Thersites' kid. I offered to check the IP of the comment against those of my commenters, and received no reply.

And it is patently absurd to read my notes and declare me a "name dropper." Of course, reading your measured attempt to simplify my position in language that pretends to understand what I'm arguing but which shows no real comprehension (for all its tone of self-assurance) is an early give away that you will attempt to be as dismissive as was Thersites.

Have you read the notes, Lindsay? Or are you just pretending you have? I try, very carefully, to move through several post-structural theories of interpretation (often tying them back to the formalism they claim to be distancing themselves from) to get at their kernel premises. To me, the particular theorist is not so important as the assumptions in his or her brand of theoretics.

Had you really read the notes, you'd see that I moved through a number of different theoretical positions and argued with each in its turn. If you'd like to show me where I've failed, then by all means do so. But calling me a name dropper for providing names when I quoted the arguments of seminal theorists in their fields (or, in footnotes, because I had placed secondary material from certain theorists I didn't have time to cover in class on reserve at the library), is absurd.

Ricouer and Gadamer were discussed under hermeneutics; Derrida, Culler and de Man under deconstruction; Searle (briefly) for speech act theory; Barthes, for the "death of the author" widely used to signal, well, the death of intentionalism; Wimsatt and Beardsley for "The Intentionalist Fallacy," Fish for Reader Response; Eco, Pierce, and Saussure for semiotics; Hayden White for historiography; James Phelan for pragmatism (vs. Wayne Booth); Knapp and Michaels for intentionalism. But to each of these names I provided an account of their arguments, and a counter to them, where necessary. How is this "name dropping," exactly?

But then, I don't hold out much hope for your intellectual honesty anyway when I see this:

Ultimately, I don't see an a priori reason to assume that all interesting literary questions can be answered by appeal to the author's intentions. In most cases, just there isn't enough evidence. Even in cases where there's a lot of evidence, it's almost impossible to formulate precise hypotheses or test competing claims about an author's intent. So, unless we're prepared to give up on literary analysis altogether, we've got to explain how we can say interesting things about stories/texts without presupposing that we can know exactly what the author intended.

...in a post that links to mine, where I have said this:

Again: saying a literary text has a single meaning and that the meaning belongs to its author is not as mind-bogglingly “radical” as s/he seems to imagine. For instance, that assertion does not say that other people can’t draw different meanings from the text, or that the meanings they draw can’t be even more interesting in many ways than the author’s original signification.

It simply points out, from the perspective of how both meaning-making and interpretation actually work, that doing so is itself an intentional act, and that when one does not appeal back to authorial intent, one has ceased interpreting and commenced writing his or her own text, which is what happens when we add our own signifieds to signifiers that have been emptied of any previous signification.

So you see, we aren't really in disagreement on those points, because of the two of us, I am the only one arguing from the perspective of what intentionalism actually says. You, on the other hand, are arguing against your preconceptions of intentionalism. Which is a fatal error, I'd say.

I also find it intriguing when people like aeroman find the basic notions of intentionalism insignificant when the point of the notes was to argue how and why it is more than some simple insignificant line drawn in the sand. How we think about what it is we're doing when we interpret has real-world effects. And I hardly think when Knapp and Michaels were arguing these points, or when Searle and Derrida were having their back and forth, anyone with an interest in this particular set of questions thought the explorations "silly."

Of course, YMMV.

But a case in point I offered was the Flight 93 Memorial kerfuffle. Again, from the post you link:

Several months ago I argued with many conservatives over the design of the Flight 93 Memorial, particularly its supposed incorporation of an “Islamic Crescent.” But I did so not because it wasn’t possible to read the Memorial’s design in just that way (it was), but rather because many of those on the right were saying that their ability to see in the Memorial design an Islamic crescent gave the Memorial a kind of cultural or conventional meaning that trumped the architect’s intent.

Which is simply untrue, if what we are talking about is interpretation.

For me, the difference between seeing something as a Islamic crescent rather than, say, an arc, is a function of intent; and if I wasn’t convinced the architect was intentionally creating an Islamic crescent, then I wasn’t going to say that the Memorial design “meant” to subtly undercut its proposed intent.

In that instance, of course, there were other considerations to factor in—the design was approved by survivors’ families, etc.—but the basic point stands: without intent, an arc is not an Islamic crescent meant to ironize or deconstruct the Memorial’s ostensible meaning. Unless, of course, you are predisposed to see it as such—that is, unless you rely on your intent to signify it in such a way.

Now, does this mean that people can’t be upset that the architect has included in his design a figure that may, to those disposed to see it in a particular way, cause consternation? Of course not. People can be upset—and in fact, a large number of people were. And they succeeded in having the design changed based on their outrage (just as, previously, a Muslim man succeeded in having a swirly cone icon removed by Burger King from its packaging by claiming it reminded him of Allah’s name, an example of conflating a non-verbal, iconographic text—the graphic representation of the edging of a swirly cone—with a verbal signifier in another language).

In both cases, the reaction is no less real or authentic for the fact that the “meaning” of the original signs didn’t match the intepretation of those who reacted so strongly to them. But then, conversely, the strength of the reaction does nothing to change the original meaning, either. It simply shows that people can intepret an author’s meaning incorrectly, and that intention is the maker of meaning on the addressee’s side of the communicative equation, as well.

My argument is that when one does not take into account what the author intended, one is no longer concerned with “interpretation” as such. Instead, s/he is concerned with what s/he is able to do with a text [...]

Real world consequences when we allow that originary intent does not ground meaning -- but rather reactions do, and the intentions of the interpreter can somehow magically be said to combine with the intention of the "author" as part of originary meaning, a maneuver that allows for a rather cynical misuse of speech acts (see, for instance, this post on Tony Snow and Think Progress)

[ss]

"Jeff's rule seems absurdly strict and arbitrary."

I don't understand how you can view as absurd a claim that a writing means what the writer meant. If you want turn it into a metaphor for something else, that's fine. You're not restricted from having your fun. But it wasn't the writer who wrote a metaphor. In fact, it's the exact opposite of arbitrary. It's certainty and finality. It prevents against somebody else using my words to arbitrarily attribute to me something I did not say. There's no need to be certain that we've arrived at the writer's exact intent, as that's largely impossible, but the important thing is we seek what was meant, rather than simply attributing to a writer what we see. Sometimes authors leave ambiguity and then will be happy to take credit for whatever genius you attribute to them, but they shouldn't earn a genius label just because a clever "interpreter" can find an ingenious application for their work. It's just fundamental communication, it's dialogue, it's understanding, it's simple honest ownership of what is yours and what is someone else's.

[geoduck2]

Jeff has reposted the private information on his blog.

Jeff, please do the right thing and delete the information.

[Amanda Marcotte]

The gist of the paper as a whole is this: The only legitimate way to analyze literature is to figure out the author's original intent.

Sweet. Good thing the only people left who think he's "smart" are the drooling illiterates in his audience.

[ss]

It was reposted because Thersite's commenters keep showing up and accusing Jeff's commenters' generally of baby-raping. thersite has been requested to produce the ISP so Jeff can find the perp who posted the alleged slur. So far, though, Thersites has provided no help in isolating the comment, just kept the accusations of baby-rape flying.

[Gary Sugar]

that a literary text has a single meaning and that the meaning belongs to ... authorial intent (Jeff G)

Even if this is supposed to include unconscious intent, no one has single or simple intentions about anything, or, to avoid an irrelevant argument, at least not about anything interesting.

Let's start with the obvious. Consider the US Constitution and Holy Bible. Both had multiple authors who often disagreed fundamentally about nearly everything. In the case of the Bible, some of the revisers were so inept they (intentionally?) contrived impossibilities like Moses narrating his own death. It's impossible to interpret a single meaning or single intent anywhere in these texts. And in the case of the Bible, lots of critics think the tension between the various intentions of the various authors and revisers and translators is a main source of the text's beauty and depth.

Now consider something written over the course of years by one author. People change. Their intentions change. But it would hardly be possible to revise every sentence in, for example, Sons and Lovers, to agree strictly with Lawrence's intents on the last day of writing. So this single meaning has to include all these various multiple meanings.

But besides opinions and intentions that vary from day to day and hour to hour, we all also have mixed feelings - that is, complex, compound, and confused opinions and intensions. This is the stuff of great literature. A text that actually had a single meaning that belonged to authorial intent would be shallow and boring.

Of course, Lawrence is famous for offering incredibly obtuse interpretations of his own works. In response to the frequent humiliation, he replied, "Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it." http://www.bartleby.com/66/80/35080.html

[nate charlow]

Jeff G has the most uncanny way of not responding to what any of his critics actually say -- see the bit above about interpretation being an "intentional act" (no shit?), which, as best I can tell, doesn't even attempt to address the worry that Lindsay raises. Something similar happened to me yesterday, when Jeff assailed my comments page with some mad copy/pasteage about how interpretation never ends (or something). I still don't quite know why he posted it, but I'm guessing it was cause it had a lot of the same words as my argument (ergo, it must be germane!)

Anyway, I think this explains Jeff's swagger (and by swagger I mean the virtual equivalent of playing whirly-doo with yourself in the mirror). Something has to compensate for the waves and waves of pudding that are JG's thoughts.

[Pablo]

geoduck2, that was you who first floated the "PW Commenters threaten to rape baby" meme, wasn't it?

You wanna retract? It's the right thing.

You know it is. Will you do it?

[Phila]

The timing of these events is a bit off. The "cocksucking" slur is a separate issue, from a week or so ago. And this weekend's debate is part of a much longer one. But the entire situation is so completely fucking nuts that there's probably no salvaging it.

Lindsey sums up the basic problem beautifully:

Jeff's larger argument fails because literary texts are in fact more like paintings and less like the single-sentence examples that most analytic philosophers of language like to model. When you're grappling with a work in full, there is no single consensual storytelling code that enables a reader to distill the author's intent into a series of truth functional claims.

Thersites's angle is more or less summed up by this quote from Bourdieu:

"Symbolic productions... owe their most specific properties to the social conditions of their production and, more precisely, to the position of the producer in the field of production, which governs, through various forms of mediation, not only the expressive interest and the form and the censorship which is imposed on it, but also the competence which allows this interest to be satisfied within the limits of these constraints. The dialectical relation which is established between the expressive interest and censorship prevents us from distinguishing in the opus operatum between form and content, that is, between what is said and the manner of saying it or even the manner of hearing it."

Goldstein's dealt with neither objection adequately so far, in my opinion. But the unbelievable, white-knuckled viciousness of the whole thing makes these issues considerably less than trivial. If Goldstein has reposted that personal info, he's got WAY bigger problems that an arbitrary, inadequate literary theory.

This is really one of the sickest online spectacles I've ever seen, all in all.

[John]

I'm sure Mr. Goldstein will agree with me when I now germanely quote Shakespeare: "It's déjà vu all over again", or as Victor Hugo quipped, "Holy catfish Batman!"

So a PW reader Malkinized Therasites. Imagine that. Yet Goldstein and horde are the victims because someone labelled him or them as baby-rapers. Let's see. I call someone a "dick", so that gives him the right to publicize personal information about my family and me that could possibly jeopardize their and my safety. That seems like a fair and balanced response. I believe Aristotle said it best (and correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff), "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

[geoduck2]

Yes, Goldstein has reposted the private information in the comments. He got mad at some commenters on his blog who he saw as part of Thers's "side." And thus, apparently felt justified in reposting the information about both Thers and his wife. (FYI - his wife was not involved in this debate - so I have no idea what his justification is there.)
--------------

Perhaps Pablo would like to describe why oral sex with a 2 year old is not rape? Do you think a 2 year old can CONSENT to oral sex?

Somebody looked at the pictures of that child and then thought about oral sex with her - that's beyond depraved. Are you INSANE!?!

I can't believe I have to say this - this is beyond disgusting.

I posted on PW that it was sick that somebody that that was funny. Then I apologized to Thers for escalating the situation and did not return to that site. The discussion on literary theory had clearly gotten out of hand and I didn't want to be associated with anybody like that.

I have to go take a walk. Sombody who said that is dangerous. And somebody just posted private information on the internet. This is scary.

[geoduck2]

FYI: For some reason Goldstein doesn't like the New Historicists - who set cultural texts within their historical context. (See, for example, Stephen Grenblatt's book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare)

Why? He wasn't very specific except he thought the literary historians were not being "objective" about the texts.

He really wants to argue about "relativism" or "deconstruction." However, that was never Thers's argument.
--------
Anyways, the evil crazyness surrounding this debate has gotten out of control. It's crazy that a debate about literary texts exploded into this.

[Thers]

Lindsay: thank you for your post. I will stand on what I said on my blog, and I will not clutter yours with an argument best held elsewhere, or by this point, probably not at all.

I have been very insulting to JG and make no apologies.

However, if you are interested in my boiled-down perspective on why JG's (pasty's) argument fails, see here.

Minor point: Thersites, from the Iliad, by way of a self-deprecating joke in Joyce's Ulysses.

Again, thanks.

[revere]

yeah, right. next thing you'll tell me is that the Constitution shouldn't be interpreted solely according to the intent of the Founders! What's next? The Bible isn't God's thoughts?

[opit]

Whoo ! Are you authoring the "idiot test" today or did you just want to make a pun about being a "bold-faced liar" ?
This post reminds me of a stunt Field and Stream did annually : they'd buy a cow from a farmer and drive around NYC with the thing strapped on the hood, boasting about the moose they shot.
Anyway, unless his name is Leonardo Michaelangelo, I'll stick with daVinci.

[nobody]

Kudos and thanks, Lindsay, for a remarkably clear post on stuff that nitwits like Goldstein obfuscate so well.

And by the way, on the Michaelangelo flub, it's not so much that the careless error was made, but that no one -- including Goldstein -- ever noticed it! Which means that no sentient being ever read the damn thing.

[Phila]

Lindsay,

Just noticed that I misspelled your name above. Sorry about that!

And thanks again. Great job.

[KH]

I’ve recently had my own minor encounter with Jeff Goldstein, & it left me convinced that the common notion that he’s an idiot is wrong & unfair. It’s true he misunderstands the basic ideas of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of language (a shortcoming he shares with other former lit. majors), reasons poorly & indeed often seems intellectually & morally incapable of participating normally in ordinary rational discussion, but he’s plainly a person of normal intelligence. The problem lies elsewhere, and I think I know where.

It’s usually a bad idea to speculate about the psychological condition of people you disagree with, but Goldstein’s behavior during my tête-à-tête with him – a typical mix of evasion, malignant invective, disappeared posts and lies (as in, more than once, I post a comment, he immediately takes it down & replaces it with a note falsely describing its content) – left me, for better or worse, searching for a psychological explanation. I was esp. struck that much of the distinctively weird personal abuse he directed at me not only described him perfectly – exaggerated sense of his own talents & achievements, enraged by criticism, relentlessly focused on himself, etc etc – , but also followed very closely the DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. On further reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that he almost certainly is a low-functioning narcissist. (Some analysts describe a malignant type, even worse.) Much of what he writes really only makes sense in that context. Read the DSM, see him with new eyes.

Should anyone be tempted to think this possibility is funny, think again. It’s true he’s an execrably awful fellow, and it'd be a real disaster if he exercised any wider influence (God help is dutiful wife & kids), but, esp. if I’m right, nobody should enjoy the prospect of making a spectacle of him.

[Thersites]

KH,

I came to this conclusion myself, though a bit late.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Phila, thanks. No worries about the name spelling. I'm just glad that Thersites didn't flame me for misspelling his name in my original post. It's fixed now. As Christopher says on the Sopranos,"Sorry, T."

Goldstein has delusions of grandeur. I mean, I only pretend to have read important people. Next thing you know, he'll be telling us how he pistol whips people with his gigantic tumescent member. Oh, wait...