The Figure In The Carpet

The writer might go down to his grave.

The figure in the carpet.

According to this theory which today we may take for granted it is the text itself that speaks and the author is a mere. This reminded me how i had observed at a particular moment after corvick. The question of interpretation. We naturally would like to know exactly what secrets vereker has embedded in his work just as the narrator would.

The figure in the carpet has become a short hand or idiom for the key to understanding a writer s work. The figure in the carpet critical commentary. It is told in the first person. James just gives me the impression of being too clever for his own good.

It is generally agreed that the figure in the carpet is one of james s more baffling stories. On his return to london the narrator sets about his work of. I enjoyed the ride and naïvely enough waited for a satisfying unveiling of the mysterious figure in the carpet. The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two but the sentence had virtually been written.

In a way i understand the joke s on me the reader. The narrator whose name is never revealed meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author s works. Although lerner doesn t mention it the title of his very short introductory chapter looking for the figure in the carpet is i assume beholden to the wonderful short story the figure in the carpet by henry james who understood a great deal about authorial intention and the pitfalls of interpretation. I should have known better.

The figure in the carpet is also significant because it prefigures a prominent twentieth century literary theory that of the death of the author expounded in the late 1960s by roland barthes and michel foucault. The figure in the carpet has evaded definitive interpretation. She was the person in the world to whom as if she had been his favoured heir his continued existence was least of a need. The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer henry james first published in 1896.