The Beauty of Hindsight

One thing that litblogging often leads me to consider is the power and possibilities of interpretation. Inevitably this process is of fundamental importance in the world of literary criticism, where great books collect interpretations the way a ship collects barnacles, and to teach literature (swapping metaphors here) is rather like being a diplomat at an international summit, entertaining all possible points of view and negotiating between them in as even-handed a way as possible (whilst subtly pushing one’s own opinion). But the land of litbloggers has a more pragmatic approach to what we might do with the information we garner from literature, and time and again there are questions raised here about how we can and should respond to books, what pleasure and insight may be gained from reading, what moral, ethical and cultural benefit we might deduce from studying works of art.

Given, then, that anyone who reads literature spends a great deal of time practising their skills of interpretation, you’d think that we would become accomplished at the art of interpretation per se, able that is, to assign meaning to events and understand their significance, as and when they happen in our lives. And yet it occurred to me that in life, as in literature, there are two distinct time periods in which interpretation takes place – one while events are happening, the other once they are finished – and that the information that we deduce from these two interpretative positions is often radically contradictory.

For instance, let me tell you about my first ever PhD student, who graduated this weekend. It’s a slow process here between submitting a thesis, undergoing a viva, and being awarded a doctorate. My student has been using the time to publish some articles and search for a job, and he’s been successful, starting in a lecturer’s position this autumn. Time-wise it’s perfect; he’s had lots of time to start preparing his teaching and to find himself somewhere to live, and so in retrospect you could say that the end to his graduate studies could not have gone more smoothly. Well, yes, but only now that the end has been reached. His experience of going through the process was a nerve-wracking and often depressing one of trying for many different jobs and research fellowships and being turned down, sometimes after interview. He didn’t know where he was going to live, or what he was going to live on, or even if he would be able to get a job in academia, where jobs of late have been thin on the ground. Some of the publications he was working on had their own difficulties: one collected volume, to which he was submitting an article, was abandoned by its editor before being resurrected by someone else. So altogether what seems in hindsight like a period of good fortune and productivity was lived as a time of uncertainty, insecurity and anxiety. Now how to trace the work of interpretation in all this? Whilst searching for a job, should my student have trusted to life’s ability to mimic the ‘happy ending’ so beloved of narrative, and therefore recognised his trials of the moment to be transitory? Or is it not the case that experience of life teaches us precisely not to trust in the deus ex machina who waves a climactic wand and orders the forces of destiny? Or is it not ultimately true that there are so many possible interpretations of events, an infinite number, in fact, that it is impossible to interpret life until a definitive event occurs that seems to instil a temporary form of conclusion?

So with this in mind, I began to think of the two interpretative processes at work when we read a novel. Whilst we read a process of assigning contingent meaning takes place, but interpretation is not possible until the end of the book is reached, at which point a more stable ‘re-reading’ occurs pretty much instantaneously, reshuffling the deck of events for one final time in the light of all possible knowledge. The detective story is the most obvious example of this process, whereby we have various interpretative hypotheses running concurrently whilst we read, which are then rapidly reread at the conclusion in order to see the ‘real’ underlying story to the events of the narrative. The unmasking of the murderer always forces a reassessment of the information that preceded it, but really the moment of rereading occurs in all novels, not just detective fiction. This double process works very well in novels because the end is always in sight, and no matter how arbitrary or inconclusive the ending, it is still by definition an ending, the last screw in the scaffolding on which we can build an interpretation. However, in life there is only one definitive ending, which is death, and which occasions the impossibility of any interpretation on the part of the subject at all.

So, literary interpretation is at best analogous to the precise science of hindsight in life, which seems to fit for me, as I am a Queen of Hindsight. I am always, always wise after the event, which must be incredibly annoying for those around me. But hindsight also exerts a kind of fascination over my mental faculties. I cannot help but reread events in the light of new evidence, and there seems to be some pleasure to be had – however futile or compromised – in understanding retrospectively the events that occur, even if such understanding has a built-in sell-by date, as it were, since fresh events are coming along all the time and forcing yet further acts of rereading.

So, I’m left wondering what to make of this seemingly transferable skill of interpretation. Is it really possible to apply it usefully to our lives, or is it nothing but a hindrance, an illusion of knowledge at best, a misleading and pointless diversion at worst? Should the process of interpretation be confined to the world of literature, whilst our energies in this material world are better applied to living in the moment? And, given that it is difficult not to interpret life events as we are experiencing them, what value should we assign to those interpretations? Do they have any value as ‘truths’, even partial, temporary ones, or can they only be given merit as an instance of our uncontrollable urge towards creativity? As you can see, it’s a question that puzzles me a great deal.