Do you know what PMSS is? Oh, it’s easy. It’s “profound meaning search syndrome”, “синдром поиска глубинного смысла” in Russian. Some disease that all literature teachers are infected by. 

Every time they say about any part of the book “Oh, what a deep meaning, ah, ah, ah”. When they say so it seems that they actually can have an orgasm because of understanding this “profound meaning” and how far-sighted the author was. My literature teacher asked our class to find meaning in a fried onion in Chekhov’s book. She thought that the author wanted to say something by this fried onion, that it’s a symbol of something!

Hell yeah, “author wanted to say”, how I like this phrase. Does he? Does he really want to say something? The answer is no. It’s just our sick mind. 
You know, the human mind is a unique thing. It always tries to connect things, find ties between them, etc. And of course, this is wrong in the majority of cases. For example, omens. In russian, they called “приметы”. This is ridiculous! A bird pooped on me, then the rain started. It means that bird poop is a sign of the rain! Only the human mind can create such ties. 
And this is exactly how it works with art – mostly with books. The author never “says something” – he just creates a world, a situation, a picture. And the human mind creates the meaning. 

But you know, I’m not against this human feature with meanings and other stuff. I actually make art much better. Because it’s making the reading of book unique, individual process. Every person will find it’s own meanings in the book. 

And this is why the literature teachers and other people with PMSS are making things worse. Instead of asking pupils to find meaning themselves, the unique and individual one, they just push their understanding. 

But this is not what the art, and especially books, supposed to be. The good book always gives the unique experience to every person – and this is why such books live for centuries.