I had to laugh when I came across this rant by a fellow who was fed up with the search for symbolism in his college literature class:
When I was a junior in college, my entire class was assigned to read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. After we read it and discussed it in class, including many of our instructors urging us to find and discuss the symbolism in it, Harper Lee came to our college and addressed an assembly of our entire class. After her remarks, she took questions. Many were asking her about the symbolism of various things in the book.
She denied there was any symbolism. As the questions persisted, she became testier and said she was just trying to write a book that a publisher would buy and publish and hopefully sell the movie rights as well. She was a starving writer trying to make a buck, she explained. Starving writers have no time for symbolism and are darned sure not going to risk getting rejected to put hidden meanings into a book. She was just trying to write a good, salable story, she insisted.
That’s the kind of admission that I’m sure causes literature teachers all over to feel a little weak in the knees!
Kind of like fundamental analysts, don’t you think? Many a fundamental analyst seem to think that they earn extra credit for showing off their creative thinking skills! That good earnings report is really not good…in fact it is down right bad when you consider it in the context of (enter the creative thinking…). Like the literature teacher, the fundamental analyst often becomes convinced that they are on to something when reality might disagree with them.
I like to think that relative strength succeeds because it is affected only by the big things-only the things that move the needle.
