Jim Rovira wrote: > Ok. Let's suppose the writer intended to achieve a specific > effect--horror, for example. He wants us to be scared poopless when we > read his works. This can be conscious or unconscious, to me it makes no > difference. This doesn't mean he actually acheived his intent. We are > still left with a text that means what it means and does what it does > regardless of what the author wanted it to do. I've not been following this thread, even though it's probably my duty to do so. By way of atonement then: remember my crackpot theory about Salinger wanting readers to think that Seymour is going to shoot Muriel just before he shoots himself? If I'm right--and I am--and if readers don't generally think that Seymour was going to shoot Muriel--and they don't--then the above point is spectacularly vindicated. -- Jimmy Delicious mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu