itself: “Well, little book, you’re not that much but you’re the best I could make you. Now you’ll just have
to make your way in the world as best you can. Fare thee well.” This ritual sending-off was called the
envoi (I told you that all the best terms are French—and the worst), meaning, more or less, to send off
on a mission.
If I told you that I didn’t owe my book an apology, we’d both know it was untrue, and every author
wraps up a manup. 279script with some trepidation as to its future welfare. That trepidation, however,
becomes pointless once the manuscript becomes a book, as the old writers understood, which is why
they told the poor book that it was now an orphan, that whatever parental protections the writer could
offer had ended. On the other hand, I figure my little enterprise can get along without me pretty well, so
I’ll spare it the send-off.
Instead I would address my envoi to the reader. You’ve really been very good about all this, very
sporting. You’ve borne my guff and my wisecracks and my annoying mannerisms much better than I have
any right to expect. A first-class audience, really. Now that it’s time for us to part, I have a few thoughts
with which to send you on your way.
First, a confession and a warning. If I have given the impression somehow—by reaching an end point,
for instance—that I have exhausted the codes by which literature is written and understood, I must
apologize. It simply isn’t true. In fact, we’ve only scratched the surface here. It now strikes me as highly
peculiar, for instance, that I could have brought you this far with no mention of fire. It’s one of the original
four elements, along with water, earth, and air, yet somehow it didn’t come up in our discussion. There
are dozens of other topics we could have addressed as easily and as profitably as the ones we did. In
fact, my original conception was for somewhat fewer chapters, and a slightly different lineup. The
chapters that wound up getting included reflect the noisiness and persistence of their topics: some ideas
refused to be denied, crowding their way in and sometimes crowding out those that were less
ill-mannered. Looking back over the text, it strikes me as highly idiosyncratic. To the extent that my
colleagues would agree that this mode of reading is at least a strong part of what we do, they would no
doubt squawk over my categories. Quite right, too. Every professor will have a unique set of emphases. I
gather my thoughts into groupings that seem inevitable, but differentp. 280groupings or formulations may
seem inevitable to someone else.
What this book represents is not a database of all the cultural codes by which writers create and readers
understand the products of that creation, but a template, a pattern, a grammar of sorts from which you
can learn to look for those codes on your own. No one could include them all, and no reader would want
to plow through the resulting encyclopedia. I’m pretty sure I could have made this book, with not too
much effort, twice as long. I’m also pretty sure neither of us wants that.
Second, a felicitation. All those other codes? You don’t need them. At least you don’t need them all
spelled out. There comes a point in anyone’s reading where watching for pattern and symbol becomes
almost second nature, where words and images start calling out for attention. Consider the way Diane
picked up on the birds in “The Garden Party.” No one taught her to go looking for birds per se in her
reading; rather, what happens is that, based on other reading experiences in a variety of courses and
contexts, she learned to watch for distinctive features of a text, for repetitions of a certain kind of object
or activity for resonances. One mention of birds or flight is an occurrence, two may be a coincidence, but
three constitutes a definite trend. And trends, as we know, cry out for examination. You can figure out
fire. Or horses. Characters in stories have ridden horses—and sometimes bemoaned their absence—for
thousands of years. What does it mean to be mounted on a horse, as opposed to being on foot?
Consider some examples: Diomedes and Odysseus stealing the Thracian horses in The Iliad, the Lone