Re: Look out for that Bread Truck, Roland!
Jim Rovira (jrovira@juno.com)
Sat, 12 Sep 1998 17:12:50 -0700
<<People can think and have their own ideas...they can synthesize
empiracle data in an objective fashion without the mediation of some
qualified figure like a priest or a parent, and thus they are
individuals. Thus, also, they can be writers. They can have something
to say. They can mean something. --Matt>>
I'm not espousing the death of the author as the death of meaning in
literature--but as I said in a previous post, and as you mentioned at the
end of your post, the author becomes the reader of a text once the text
is published. I don't think you **intended** this (a loaded word, now :)
), but I will say that the "author" dies at that point and becomes just a
reader.
Umberto Eco makes a distinction between the model author and the
empirical author. The model author is something like a voice within the
text directing us to read it a certain way, while the empirical author is
the person who really wrote the book. The two are not the same.
You need to establish your line of reasoning from death of author to loss
of meaning. It was affirmed, but not demonstrated to be true.
There's a way in which your argument can work both ways. In a sense,
anchoring meaning in the author is similar to putting all the authority
in a priest figure--the author. This disempowers the individual by
submitting all individual readings to One Reader.
I believe that the meaning of a text resides in the words of the text :)
Silly me :)
But I know it's more complicated than that :)
Jim
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