Hirsch's Validity and My Amazon Review

In addition to my scholarly and near-scholarly writings on Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, I wrote an Amazon review of the book. You might reasonably ask, what is the difference between the other work and the review? Recently, I have been reading E.D. Hirsch's Validity in Interpretation. The answer according to Hirsch is the distinction between criticism and interpretation (page 8, and many other pages). Criticism evaluates the work and judges whether or not it is good and worth reading. Interpretation analyses how the text was constructed and what the author may have meant by what was written. One needs a bit of interpretation before one can evaluate the significance of the work (Hirsch page 209), but the two are separate. My Amazon review is a critical evaluation, while my Evidence of Influences and "Dialectic of American Humanism" are interpretations.

Added note: In my Amazon review, I state that I use a theory of physical comedy articulated by Rowan Atkinson in the documentary called "Laughing Matters," which was part of a series in 1992 called "Funny Business." In my review, I state that the relevant sections of "Laughing Matters" (parts 4 and 5) are on YouTube. As of February 16, 2013, I can no longer find part 4 on YouTube. The permanent link to part 5 is at Laughing Matters Part 5. Perhaps part 4 had copyrighted film clips as examples. You could try to get a copy of the documentary through Interlibrary Loan, but it is very rare. This WorldCat record Number 1 is to a DVD of the documentary, with several copies held in Holland and one copy held in the United States. This WorldCat record Number 2 has many copies of the VHS version of the documentary, but only in Australia. This WorldCat record Number 3 links you to a VHS copy held in Nevada. And, for those of you in Germany, this WorldCat record Number 4 links you to a DVD copy held at a German university library.