Having finally finished The Secular Scripture, I thought now
would be an excellent time to reflect on the book as whole. I must start by admitting that if I have ever
encountered “referential mania” in the real world, it has been in the works of
Frye. His ability to fly through works
and draw obscure connections without making those connections explicit is
something that will be lost on most readers as I expect will have happened on a
lot of this class. Frye expects his
readership, or perhaps does not expect them, to recognize the works of the Samuel
Richardson and Henry Fielding, know the relationship and—for lack of a better
word—competition between them, all without naming the two of them
specifically: Tom Jones and Pamela are
all the clues Frye gives to the relation.
Perhaps this type of mystery is what I find most pleasing in Frye’s
work. This demanded placed upon the
reader to be well-read and be able to move from the smallest references to the
larger works is what will make these works nearly impenetrable to someone who
is not a fifth as well-read as Frye himself.
Since we have talked about nearly
all the chapters of the book in class, I want to point out one of my favorite
sections from the final. Near the end of
the chapter, Frye, quoting Sartre, says “hell is other people. The creative act is an individualizing act,
hence, for all the sense of participation, we are also returning to a second
kind of isolation” (184). This reminded
me of another quote that I once encountered, though I am not certain where,
that said, “I am a writer because I want to tell stories, but I do not want to
have to look people in the eyes.” Later,
Frye notes, “In human life creation and contemplation need two people, a poet
and a reader, a creative action that produces and a creative response that
possesses” (185). There is, indeed, a
unique relationship between the writer and reader. There are no relationships that are the
same. Every reader, has an unique
relationship with any writer. No two are
the same. This creates a sense of
isolation for the writer. Each reader
composes his or her own image of the writer and none of these creations, may be
the correct one. In this sense, the
writer is surrounded by people who may think they understand him, and, perhaps,
that is the greatest of isolations.
