Death of the Author

So...


I thought it might be fun to write a blog post that isn't a poem, as this is a blog and all. And I was thinking about Death of the Author, which is probably one of the more pertinent things to mention on a blog where I've so far basically talked about my own poems a lot. (And it's not poetry. If it's poetry, then I'm a poet, which I'm not. Personally, I think you can't call yourself a -er unless you get regularly paid for -ing, which is why I'm not a writer either. Also, to my mind describing my stuff as "poetry" risks making me sound even more pretentious than I already do, which is a sickening thought.)


So, Death of the Author is a paper by Roland Barthes, who was apparently one of the more eminent literary critics of the last century. The idea is that the author's interpretation of the text is only as valuable as anyone else's - so really, what am I doing writing any of this at all... (Oh, and the title, from what I can tell, means the death of the idea of an Author (he doesn't even say "author", because it's too close to "authority", going for "scriptor" instead), rather than the idea that the author may as well have died as soon as they've written the story. But you get the idea.)


Barthes says that this frees texts (literary critics, even the good ones, have an unfortunate habit of reducing books to texts, which are books on an autopsy table) from the "tyranny" of interpretation, that is, one single interpretation; it also discounts the approach of examining the author's life and opinions to explain the text. (There I go... J. D. Salinger put, as the dedication for one of his books, "If there is an amateur reader still left in the world – or anybody who just reads and runs – I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.")


How relevant background information should be is a tricky one. To a greater or lesser extent, all writing is autobiography - I can't remember where it's from (and I just spent ten minutes typing variations into Google and those depressing quotation databases), but someone said, "In their first novel everyone is either Jesus or Satan". The implication that you grow out of that phase with experience is valid, I suppose, but I doubt you ever escape it completely. How can you, if you see the world through your own eyes?


Ahem. Anyway, so there's always an element of the author (scriptor, writer, whatever) in the text, but you could say that that's only one part of it. Or that it's only one interpretation - like Barthes says, he's trying to get rid of the tyranny of one opinion, not the opinion itself. So in The Cherry Orchard, to take a random example, you could point out that Chekhov's family were forced to sell their house to a lodger, which could be the inspiration for the way that the Gayev family sell their estate and the cherry orchard to a former peasant from it, who then fells the orchard. Or you could say that the purchase and destruction of the cherry orchard by a former peasant represents the social upheaval and accompanying violent modernisation of Russia in the early 20th century. Chekhov's beautifully inconclusive writing supports any and no interpretation, thankfully.


This is why it's a bad idea to read the introductions to books, I suppose, especially "classics". For my money the way to read a book is to start at the beginning, move on through the middle, then stop at the end. By all means, if the book is difficult to understand (verbally, I mean, for example reading Shakespeare), have notes, but I think the problem with "classics" (I'm sorry for the sneer quotes, but I really can't take that label seriously - it's too close to trying to define objective value - a topic which may or may not appear in its own post at some point) is that they're seen to be conceptually difficult, which is often true. Thus you get introductions and explanatory notes, trying to explain what the author meant.


Well, I'm sure Barthes would have spat if he heard you trying to use what you think the author meant (or what the author has actually said they meant) to definitively limit the interpretation of the work. It's lazy on the reader's part and harmful on the publisher's to tell them what to think. Make up your own mind, instead of letting other people's opinions cloud yours. Or just read the introduction after...


That's kind of where my format for posting poems comes from: the poem is the first thing you see, and it's a lot bigger than the sub-rants because it's more important. If you want to hear what I was thinking about when I wrote it, it's there, as is the description of the way I wrote it, if that interests you. There's no compulsion to, I hope.


Take a recent example: I write a poem. (Sadly, it happens.) I want to show the poem to one of my friends. (Sadly, it happens. I'm putting them up here mostly so that I can talk about my poems at a text box instead of a long-suffering friend.) In the poem I describe kissing someone; my friend immediately asks me who the girl is.


It's missing the point. If I describe a kiss (Come to think of it, one of my friends did. I'll link at the end. It's heart-breakingly good.) the kiss stands alone, in as much detail as I've given it. If you needed to know the girl's full name (my, that'd be an interesting Facebook add) I'd have already given it. Wanting to be fed additional details to help you interpret the poem, novel, erotic limerick in three parts or whatever is approaching asking to be told what to think, which you should never, ever do because it's mental fucking suicide.


So yeah, Death of the Author: The author's opinion is not definitive. By all means take it into account, but it and the text (argh, you know what I mean) are separate. The text is the art part (and I'm really, really not going to go into what constitutes art, not even in a separate post (hint: the word comes from the Latin for 'skill') because how much more obnoxiously undergraduate can you get...) and the opinion is at best an informed commentary.


But please feel free to disagree...




Links


Here's Barthes' paper, so you can form your own opinion on it instead of blindly accepting mine, should you be so inclined. (Gosh, look what I did there...)


Here's the poem by my friend Hattie, who might crop up again around here. She's seriously good.


The J. D. Salinger book is Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. If you're going to read it (you can find it online if you're too cheap to buy) I would read the rest of Salinger's non-Catcher In the Rye stuff, because they're all linked, and just as good as Catcher, if not better (whisper it). It's as good a one to start with as any.