LETTER: World Text

To the Editor: I choose to ignore the philosophical problem to which Lissner indirectly alludes of where meaning, so to speak, lies. I choose instead to suggest that the habitual under-reading of texts, especially the text of the world, poses a danger far greater than any engendered by the promiscuous discovery of phallic symbolism in literature. Andra and Darren Fogel, in their column "Sympathy and Spare Change" (DP 10/7/92), fail to discover any possible causes of homelessness other than the American people's putative insistence on creating a welfare state. Never in its meandering course does the Fogels' column explore correlations between an individual's inability to obtain and maintain housing and that individual's mental health, race or gender, three possible correlatives. The Fogels glibly present an embarrassingly shallow reading of a problem in its social context, just as Lissner glibly mistakes the spermaceti which the crew of the Peaquod gathers for whale semen. Fortunately, Lissner's ignorance of whaling terminology will have little impact on the thoughts or deeds of her readers. She who sees in The Heart of Darkness the rape of ivory from the womb of Africa via the vaginal Congo -- which river Conrad himself described as a snake -- has perhaps transcended the author's understanding of his own creation. She has certainly forged an interpretation of the novella which might allow her to posit and explain a relationship between capitalism, slavery and the exploitation of women. That possibility of insight excuses a certain forgery. GENE MCGARRY Graduate Student School of Arts and Sciences