In yesterday’s the New York Times, Stanley Fish—literary critic and former head of the English department at Duke University—deconstructed the terms “interpretation,” “intentionalist,” and “judicial activist” in the context of the then-impending Supreme Court pick. It’s nice to see someone from the world of letters represented on the Op Ed page, although the Times might think about giving someone else a turn, as we recently heard from Dr. Fish on how writing should be taught. (Answer: Have students make up their own languages.) Maybe now that Fish has moved from English to law, joining the College of Law at Florida International University this fall, the Times figures he counts in multiple areas.

In the article, Fish contends that the only valid way to interpret the Constitution is to seek to divine the framers’ intent. The text cannot stand on its own devoid of intent, he says; anyone who attempts to find his or her “own” meaning in the text is just makin’ stuff up. It’s pretty black-and-white, the way he lays it out. It all sounds extremely reasonable when applied to the Constitution, of course, especially at the end when Fish backpedals a bit and says that different people might marshall different evidence to arrive at different conclusions regarding the framers’ intentions (not so black-and-white after all).

But Fish is tricky; he’s not just commenting on the Supreme Court nomination, he’s also tweaking the nose of the lit-crit establishment, who rejected divination of “authorial intent” as a valid critical method years ago and whose bread-and-butter is “making meaning” out of “texts.” Sure, you might take an author’s historical milieu or political status or sexuality into account when discussing a text, but there’s also plenty of room for the reader’s experience. Fish does away with all that; his declaration that “authorial intent” is the only way to interpret the Constitution carries the unspoken judgment that it’s the only way to look at a literary text as well.

Fish’s remarks were in the back of my mind as I was reading Aitch Where the Wild Things Are at bedtime last night. I’ve read it several hundred times as an adult, and I love the language; read out loud, it’s very poetic. But last night, for the first time, as I got to the part where Max was made king of all Wild Things, it hit me: The Wild Things represent the seductive side of the working world, the promise of success, power, and adoration. But Max senses their danger, and their entreaty as he escapes back to his private boat is telling: “We’ll eat you up, we love you so!” The better you are, the more the corporation will use you up; its love is consuming, and Max is wise to retreat to the bosom of family life.

Sure, it may have been weeks of sleep deprivation, work stress, or the hand, foot, and mouth disease migrating to my brain. But I’m pretty sure that’s what Maurice Sendak intended.