I have to say I was thrilled to finally see Blau (or anybody) address this issue. I always balk at the idea “there is no such thing as a correct or incorrect reading of a text” (189), and not because I believe the “expert’s” interpretation (or my own, for that matter) is superior in any way, but because, like Blau points out, there simply are wrong answers.
Again, his examples drawn from a long career are helpful in illustrating the point: lacking the knowledge of WWII fighter planes makes “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” a much more difficult poem, and a failure to grasp metaphor can lead to a number of misreadings in nearly any piece of literature. As he says, these mistakes are not made because of stupidity or illiteracy, but are made “out of ignorance, inattention, lack of experience, or…the vagaries of a momentarily mistaken perspective.” (190) We’ve all been there; I myself evinced this during the Think Aloud exercise a few weeks ago, confusing “carbide” for “carbine”, leading to much confusion on my part and my fellow readers. Without the context of a date, a student may be forgiven for reading Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” as a metaphor for nuclear holocaust; I know it has happened before, and will happen again.
Relieved as I am to see somebody admit that yes, some readings are just plain wrong, I was slightly irked that he waited until his penultimate chapter to address it. It seems like an issue that, as a teacher, he’d want to get to sooner than that, but that may just be my own proclivities showing through. Such mistaken readings, if not swiftly corrected, can quickly derail an entire classroom of students, sending them down an unproductive path of inquiry, and discussing or arguing about something that has no useful bearings on the text itself. Such harmful tangents need to be avoided and correctly swiftly, especially in a class with a very limited amount of time for discussion in the first place.
That said, there is no need to be harsh about the corrections; the way one goes about correcting these misreadings is important for ensuring that students continue to feel comfortable making contributions to class, even if they are mistaken. Often, we learn more from making mistakes than from successes.