I truly enjoy the way Ricoeur writes, mixing his heavy expository style with whimsy and Romantic reverence for the act of reading. I particularly enjoyed his likening of reading to the execution (enacting) of a musical score (159)—which is not like the execution (beheading) of the author by the reader (147). I found his bits about reading as coming to a self-understanding before the world of the text particularly agile. This certainly explains (in words I will praise far more than, say, Rosenblatt’s) why there exists in every text the potential for multiple readings. The mental image I get—stolen from Michael Ende: the moment when Atreyu and Bastian see each other through the mirror (the name of which I cannot remember and I refuse to consult my bookshelf since this really is of little importance) and thus begin to understand—is particularly strong. We can, certainly, only understand the text through ourselves with all of those biases and prejudices that we have little hope of shedding (this is dull—we have all heard it before). But the interpretation of a text culminating in the “self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands himself better, understands himself differently, or simply begins to understand himself,” (158) is so pretty that I can hardly stand it. No, really. I get little joy bubbles inside when I read this. It’s wishy-washy, I know, but I am having a bad week (I know, I know, it is barely just turned to Wednesday and I don’t even have comps this weekend), and I need this to cheer me up. Besides, “the intended meaning of the text is not essentially the presumed intention of the author…but rather what the text means for whoever complies with its injunction.” (161)