Comrades

Manfred Fuhrmann

This smarty pants philologist and I had more in common than just our German roots. Manfred was a treasured member of the Constance School, a group of literary theorists who were all about Reader Response, close reading, and reception theory. (More on all of these very important concepts later.) Together, we caused a lot of innovation in the way people were thinking about books.

Manfred was on board with the Constance School's belief in the importance of the reader (or "consumer") of the text. It may seem obvious, but at this period, people were really hopped up about Marxism and New Historicism (and let's not forget about Post-Structuralism, which was all around us), so we had a bit of an uphill battle.

Wolfgang Iser

Like Manfred, Wolfgang was into the whole "reception theory" thing. He and I were basically the bigwigs of the Constance School. We both started in the academic trenches, studying German literary criticism. Together, we were unstoppable—passing by Formalist criticism like a big rig on the highway.

We spent endless hours talking about the text as the site where it all happens: readers make and produce meaning with the text; they don't discover something concrete or objective that is already there.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Everyone has a favorite teacher, and Professor Gadamer was mine. He got me really fired up about developing a new way of studying literature. He introduced me to cool concepts like "change of horizon" and "impact history" (Wirkungsgeschichte, if you want to make it sound more important).

We kind of differed on the idea of classicity, because I thought that reading a classical work had a certain timelessness about it, and Professor here thought that the reader of classical works (we're talking about stuff written in Greek and Latin) would always have to cross the space between ancient times and modern times while reading. I wasn't so worried about this back and forth—the reader can handle it, I think. Still—love this guy.

Martin Heidegger

Marty is a tricky one. First, his writings on existentialism and phenomenology are way tough. When I figure out what his whole idea of unconcealing your Being through time is all about, I'll let you know. People don't usually acknowledge Heidegger as a pal, what with his being a Nazi sympathizer and all, but hey: who am I to judge? Marty was my beloved professor, and we could always steer the conversation toward how the everyday impacts our aesthetic experiences.

Rivals

Russian Formalists

I'm just gonna put it out there: I didn't really have "rivals." Strangely, people never took a personal dislike to me—at least not publicly. However, I must acknowledge that my theories weren't universally embraced. I was working in the 1970s and 80s—the era of theory (deconstruction, post-structuralism, and all that fancy French thinking), as some called it—so there were a lot of theories swirling around.

My ideas of reception theory didn't jibe well with Russian Formalism. What we agreed on: the idea of "literary evolution"—i.e., the idea that literature changes through time, and that its meaning to readers also changes through time. Books are sort of like trees falling in the woods: without readers, they mean nothing. This means that a book is a process, not a product.

Now, here's where we disagreed: the Russian Formalists didn't have much respect for the reader's opinion. They were way more concerned with the words on the page. Language and grammar were their buzzwords; reception was mine.

Marxist Critics

Again, Marxists weren't my rivals, but some of our ideas clashed and converged, you might say. I mean, I could really feel their whole appreciation for historical frameworks; I think historical frameworks are important, too—at least up to a point. A book is never read in a vacuum, am I right? We were on the same page on that.

But Marxists just way exaggerated the importance of the text. They thought that texts propagated ideologies; for them, it was the texts that made reality and influenced history. I, however, am convinced that it's the reader who makes reality and influences history. I love books as much as any Marxist, but let's not overplay the importance of the text, 'kay?