Anthony's article "Ushering Audience Out" is where I first ran across "all those folks out there in chairs," and I don't _care_ where you got it, Anthony. I got it from you (there's a Tom Lehrer song about that -- sort of biological multitextuality). > I think, > though, that the academic "audience" (still a totally unsatisfactory > metaphor for me) is more accurately perceived as a critic in the theatre > - a "reader" waiting to find fault. Yes. My view exactly. That's why I think of them as "in chairs." > Can we not agree that there are such > things as authentic opportunities for reading, more or less, and that > the academic reader is simulating such a reading? The thing that bothers me, in fact, is exactly "simulation." The problem with simulation is that it's _thin_. It just doesn't offer the richness of real experience -- the trick of offering a workable substitute for real experience is something that characterizes great writers (it just occurs to me that this is right where literature fits into composition. I'll get back to you on this . . .). > The closest authentic > reading situation I can imagine that "fits" reading student essays is > the one we all find ourselves in as working scholars, and the evaluation > we deploy against student writing is a measure of how far that writing > falls from the writing we experience (or expect) professionally. Thank you. Exactly. Except . . . as a _scholar_, I read "Ushering Audience Out" not to evaluate it, but to learn from it. (Had I been reviewing for _TSC_ I might have read it differently, though I hope I'd have noticed, as I read, that I'd stopped being a referee and started being a partner. > I should add that I find Russ Hunt's one BIG idea both very persuasive and > very big. Thanks -- but in large measure I still think of it as an idea I got from Inkshed, so it's not a surprise to me that some inkshedders cotton on to it. -- Russ __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Aquinas Chair St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424 Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ [log in to unmask] \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/hunt/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~