Re: Look out for that Bread Truck, Roland!

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 19:05:15 +1000

> <<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.

Well, funnily enough, this is pretty much what I've been trying to say all
along. Once his intention has been rendered, there's nothing he can do
about it. But it's funny how knowledge of the author can make us reassess
our view of where his intentions may lie. For example, the Joyce Maynard
revelations sent quite a few people scurrying back into their texts to find
out whether or not, as Cheryl put it, Salinger really was a `hoochie daddy'
(: Try as we might, Salinger can never fade into the walls. Which is
strange really, because it seems to be what he tries to do with his
fiction, but the fact that he tries to hide physically makes us even more
eager to find him amongst the shadows.

The author may be dead but the Cult of the author is flourishing ! (:

I was just thinking how strange it is the way the Salinger/Maynard thing is
in a way our own version of the Lewinsky/Clinton thing in miniature. It
would be a nice topic for a book or a movie or something. Someone
approached me with a view to write a movie about Salinger a while ago. I
said I'd have a think about it - but it'd have to be a long think. I wonder
what Salinger could do, legally, about preventing a biography?

Think I'd make it one of those `it sort of isn't X but everyone know it's
supposed to be X' kind of characters instead (:

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
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