I've sat many a days and pondered over much of modern art. I can think of nothing but "its shit" when I see a carefully placed piece of dog shit on a plate being passed as art. So I asked a more artistic person than myself.

They responded: Of course, this piece of shit on the plate symbolizes what people are fed throughout their lives - either literally eating unhealthy foods (shit) or more theoretically through the bullshit they encounter throughout their lives. The artist was trying to convey a message about life: everything can be, or is, shit being fed to you on a platter.

Disclaimer: I made all of this up on the spot, but I have seen shit on a plate being passed as art before. So it was partially inspired, which I guess makes the dog shit on a plate art. By some standards.

I disagree and I have another explanation - that the whiners actually have enough mental/creative flexibility to recognize that something is a completely made-up, arbitrary explanation and to classify it as such. The problem they have is not with interpretations, it's with passing it as facts. Like that high school teacher that tells you "what the author intended" as a fact of the matter even though she has no clue what the author thought, no base for her assertions except her own imagination - assertions which she probably learned from some "literature critics", who most likely didn't have any clue either.

(In Poland we have this urban legend about granddaughter of Stanisław Lem getting a bad grade on an assignment about interpretation of Lem's work, even though she went to his grandfather, asked about "what he intended" and wrote what he said verbatim.)

Interpreting works of art is fine, seeking new meanings, getting inspired, etc. is also fine. Just call a spade a spade. Otherwise it's just a particularly insulting intellectual dishonesty.

In a sense, the English teacher telling you "this is what it means" is a bit like the science teacher saying "this is how physics works". It's a simplification of the real intellectual field to help people learn. Perhaps for some people the reduction is unhelpful though.

My experience is of being an analytical whiner throughout school, and then suddenly understanding the point when it was explained to me by a fellow analyst in university. I can't help wondering how much more I (and others) may have enjoyed English if someone had explained it sooner.

An English teacher telling you "this is what it means" is NOT the right thing for that English teacher to do! It alienates those who see that the teacher's "right" interpretation is arbitrary.

Most of what we do is completely made-up and arbitrary. "Beautiful, clean code" is completely arbitrary, you're just doing what your software engineering instructor told you is correct.

And I think you're completely missing the point -- the author's intention is not unknown, it is irrelevant, since the purpose of literature is not to explicitly convey a simple intention, it is to provoke a reaction in the reader; we first experience the art and second analyze which pieces of it are effective to make us feel how we feel. Intention of the author isn't interesting or meaningful. And to misunderstand that is to misunderstand art itself, which is why we see here people suggesting we "call a spade a spade" -- whatever that means.

And realistically your teacher probably knows a lot more about what the author intends than you do. There is a lot of historical context and other works that put the novel into context. But that's not even relevant; you're being taught to think and look for examples, it doesn't really matter if they were put there intentionally. When you develop your abilities and are good enough to think about literature past the high school level then you can start thinking for yourself, just like in every field, but when you're intellectually a child in the field, you need to listen and learn. Unfortunately most children are petulant and whine and decide since they don't understand it yet, it must be nonsense, and everyone who is an expert and has dedicated their life to it "didn't have any clue" and give up. Like you see here.

You don't need to look that far. Fahrenheit 451, which nearly everyone interprets as anti-government censorship, was written by Bradbury as anti-TV, i.e. "television is rotting people's minds". It's literally an old man grumbling about new technology. See: http://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-mis...

Or maybe they're different from you, and writing off their perspective as "narrow and inflexible" is, itself, narrow and inflexible.

Everyone has a perspective, and all perspectives are fundamentally interesting in their own right. Is that not the humanist idea? Is that not what a liberal education is supposed to teach?

A liberal education doesn't require that we tolerate intolerence; it doesn't require that when someone expresses disgust and acts above something they don't understand that we just throw our hands up and say "well all opinions are equally valid". Postmodernism doesn't require that we consider all interpretations and opinions equally valid, just that we realize the value is in the interpretation itself.

You're correct I come off as a little defensive, but this thread is full of obnoxious condescending engineers who think since they know some math and science they are better than everyone at everything, and that everything they don't understand is because it's not worth understanding. It is full of people attacking art because "it's useless, I didn't get it so it's trash and anyone who pretends to is a liar and I'll have fries with that English major scum LOL" And I'll attack that attitude with the ferocity it deserves; it's disgusting and a disservice to all of us.

I'm a scientist as well so I'm of course sympathetic to those who aren't particularly interested in the humanities and I think that's just fine but in a toxic environment like this I'll go out of my way to defend them aggressively since far too often I see people just roll over.

> A liberal education doesn't require that we tolerate intolerence

Nice little trick, equating people who disagree with you to Nazis and Klan members.