Who is the ultimate authority of a piece of fiction? The author? The reader? That professor at the prestigious university? Or nobody? Which interpretation of a piece of fiction is correct? If a reader thinks the book means one thing, but the author meant another, who is correct? Or, more importantly, perhaps - does it even matter?
Scott talked about this subject yesterday, but I'd like to look at it a little from the writer's point-of-view today.
First-Hand Experience!
I hope you'll bear with me as I share my own experience. In 2010, I self-published a little novella titled Cinders. The reception for that story was interesting, to say the least. Most readers seemed lukewarm toward it. Some adored it. It was when I sat down with a reading group (no writers present) that some important ideas began to sink in for me. I had been warned in advance that half the group hated the book. I decided to show up anyway. What's the worst that could happen? I would drive home in tears? Sadly, that's what did happen. My ego was wounded that day. The readers who disliked Cinders (hate is a strong word, isn't it?) seemed to dislike it because their expectations were not met. That's what it boiled down to. Some quite literally expected pumpkins and talking mice. Some expected the story to end with a traditional happily-ever-after despite the clear warning on the front, which says: "Happily-ever-after isn't as long as you though." Some were upset that my main character, Christina, was unlikable, weak, and a poor example for empowering women.
I'll admit during this time, I believed there were right answers for my novel and that those readers who disliked it WERE WRONG. I believed it so strongly that I later added an author's note at the beginning of the novel in hopes of altering reader expectations. I remember as I as was driving home, thinking, "I'll show them what the book really means." A bit stupid on my part, I'll admit, because as far as I can remember, those readers didn't seem to care about what the book "really meant." They cared about what it meant to them. Even when I attended another reader group for a different novel, the readers took turns answering questions from the reader guide. Nobody had the same answers. Some of the answers knocked me off my feet. They were interpretations I never intended, and they were as far from incorrect as you can possibly get. To me, the author, they brought new meaning and depth of the book. I realized, then, that I am not the authority of my books.
Giving the World a Story
I will always keep learning and altering my views, but for today I am certain that Truman Capote's quote about finishing a novel (which I interpret to mean publishing it and giving it to the world) is akin to taking your child out back and shooting it. Seem a little dramatic? Perhaps. But the point I want to make here is that when an author decides to give the world their story, they are doing just that - giving the world their story. The child is shot. The story is up for grabs, up for interpretation, even if that means misinterpretation according to the author. And what is the author going to do about that? Publish a "right-answer" guide to go along with the story? I think the magic of stories lies in reader interpretation. Take that away and you lose something essential.
I do not mean to imply, of course, that the author's intention doesn't matter at all. I think it does, but I also know writing a novel is such an involved process that it's impossible for even the author to have all the answers for what they've written. Subconscious comes into play. Other readers giving feedback. Editors. Publishers. The publishing process itself can add elements to the text the author never intended. So, in the end, I believe the author has her own version of the answers, and if that version is more important to a specific reader than anybody else's version, so be it.
I have so much I could keep rambling about on this subject, but let's open it up to you! Who do you think is the ultimate authority of a piece of fiction? And do you think it matters?
I think the ultimate authority on a piece of fiction is the text itself. The author can often be blinded by what she meant to say instead of what she did say. And readers' opinions, even if honestly held, can be wrong. For example, even if I truly believed that Moby Dick was a thinly veiled allegory of the AIDS crisis, or was about a young boy's quest to learn to play mah jongg, I would be wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe "rightness" of an interpretation of a text, to my mind, is the degree to which it has persuasive justification in the text itself. That's not to say there's ever any "one right" interpretation for any book, however.
I appreciate you sharing your experience with the readers' groups. That was very interesting. And I agree very much with your "giving the story to the world" point. Write it, revise it, have done, and let the work stand on its own merits and let readers draw what interpretations they wish. Hopefully getting paid will factor in there somewhere, too.
Jabez, thank you for your comment! I have to agree with you on the ultimate authority is the text itself. For the most part, texts outlive authors and readers. It goes through all these cycles. I think it's fascinating that a book takes on a life of its own.
DeleteSo far, for me, money has entered into the picture, although it's very little at the moment. I like to think of being an author as a very long term investment in readers, telling stories, and creating a meaningful career. I sure hope more money comes into play the longer I'm invested! :)
Michelle, your post runs along the lines of what another writer friend posted on Facebook the other day: When I write a novel, I never set out to have "themes" in it or "lessons" or "morals," so it is always fascinating and interesting to me when people talk about the books, or review them, or "blurb" them and I learn what "theme/lesson/moral, etc" they have personally taken from it.
ReplyDeleteMy response to her post: My theory about themes in literature: they don't exist. What does exist is what people take away from the novels based on their own personal experiences . . . and that, for lack of a better term, English professors coined the phrase theme.
And that response, pretty much fits with what you said. Our intent as a writer when writing a novel, really doesn't matter once it's out there in the world, because, well, everybody has an opinion.
Great post.
S
The thing is though that not everybody pays attention to the text while reading it. Some people read shallowly, miss the irony or allusions to culture or other literary works, or simply are distracted while reading. So the opinion of those people might be less accurately reflected by the text itself than the opinions of other people. Which gets to what Jabez says about the text being the final authority of itself. That's a very formalist approach to literature.
DeleteThere are other approaches, though, which take into consideration the culture of the author and the surrounding literature and suchlike things. If you look at a work of art as a piece of history, you "read" it a different way.
There's also a psychological approach, where you take the author's personal history into account and "read" the book as a sort of veiled confession, and you do try to reconstruct the author from the text, and the text is really a book "about" the author.
There are a lot of ways to read a text, and the same text can reveal a variety of meanings depending on how it's read.
There are also people who "overread" a text, and claim that it contains things that it doesn't. It's hard to argue these sorts of claims without direct textual evidence, but it's hard to argue against them if you can see paratextual evidence to support the claims. For example, Anton Chekhov's stories ocassionaly feature Jewish characters. The author gives no opinion of Jews in the stories, but I happen to have read letters Chekhov wrote to friends and families where he reveals a low opinion of Jews, which was a common prejudice among Russians of his era. After reading this, "Jew" is no longer a neutral descriptor when I see it in a Chekhov story; it's more a perjorative. So I'm bringing in something paratextual to influence my reading of the text. It's anarchy, man.
Scott and Scott, I think it's anarchy, absolutely. Which is why putting your work out there is the scariest thing ever and why last year was such a huge transition for me. All these realizations that I have no control over lazy readers or readers who are looking into the text thinking parts of it are confessions and making judgments upon me. I have no control over any of it, which brings me back to the conclusion that the text is the ultimate authority with the reader's influence branching off of that. Some writers remove themselves from their work by using a pen name and remaining completely anonymous, which adds (or removes) an even more interesting factor in interpretation depending on how you look at it.
DeleteI think the ultimate authority is the author. They were the person with the thoughts about the story in the first place and know why they wrote what they did. It doesn't matter what every one else INTERPRETS what you meant, or didn't, YOU know what you meant and that's all that counts.
ReplyDeleteAnd as the story goes out into the world and more people read it, would you feel you have to defend what you meant to every. single. person.? I don't think so.
I had a question from my crit partner about my hero being drunk.
Could he have been that drunk to do what he did? Yes, absolutely. You know why, because I've been that drunk. But I'm not going to defend myself to every single person that can't suspend their belief for the moment that he could be.
So in answer, no I don't think it matters. People are going to think what they will no matter what we believe. But ultimately, I think it is up to us as the author to keep our integrity over what we've written. Not so much to defend ourselves, but to NOT defend ourselves. What's that line from the game show? Is that your final answer? Yes, the final answer is -- the work is out there, that's what I wrote, if you don't like it, too bad.
So once the author is dead, there is no ultimate authority?
DeleteThere's a chapter in an AS Byatt book where a literature student is reading poems by a Famous Poet who happens to be in residence at her university. She sees some imagery in his poems that's never been discussed by the Poet or by critics and she points it out to him. "All this language about trunks and roots; it's all about trees" or whatever (I forget exactly what it was). So the images are clearly there, clearly a part of the text, but the Famous Poet denies their existence because he didn't have trees in mind when he wrote. But the words remain undeniably in the text, there for anyone to see. I think any complex literary work is going to contain elements that the author doesn't see during the creative process. Which, as an author, I think is a sort of scary thought.
Anne, I would argue that the author is just another reader once she puts her work out there for others. It's finished and it's open for interpretation. Maybe this is the romantic side of me coming out, but I like to think of each book I put out there as its own entity, like a child. I may have given birth, but I've never felt anything I've created is entirely mine anymore once it's finished. I think this is why I have such a difficult time typing THE END and finishing major revisions and drafts. Like Scott says in his comment, it's a scary thought to think that our texts contain things we never saw before. I've seen this happen in my own work over and over and over, and it is awesome and awful at the same time. It shows me that the work can be interpreted and re-interpreted continually, even by the author. For me, that has been more of an experience as a reader of my own work than an authority of it.
DeleteYes, I've had people point out themes and other sub-texts that as an author I didn't realize I put into it when I wrote it. It's all in THEIR interpretation.
DeleteHowever, I guess we're looking at this from two different perspectives. Once I publish, I never look at the book again. It's done, it's free, now fly. I've let it go and hopefully it won't come back to spit in my face.
But, that's also the way I am in other areas of my life. Once I leave a job or lover or house where I lived, I don't return. It's done, it's over. I've given it all I had, and don't need to think about it anymore. I move on. People can interpret that as cold hearted or jaded or whatever. But that's part of who I am. I don't believe in looking at the past, only the future and what's next. I don't dwell in what if's.
Scott, yes, I believe that once the author is dead there is no ultimate authority. We, as reader, can interpret all we want, but we don't know what was in the author's mind when they wrote it. So, we will never know what he was thinking. With the Byatt story, sure the professor didn't realize it was all about trees, because that's not what he intended to write.
DeleteAnd yes, I agree it is a scary thought that we don't see what others do when they read. I think that means we're more brilliant than we give ourselves credit for.
Michelle -- an addendum. I also think that you and I are also coming at this from an entirely different perspective because what I write is finite. It's genre fiction, not literary and there is no interpretation in my writing. You know what you're getting when you open the book. A happily ever after. I have no need to re-vision my work, or look for themes or trees when there are only roots and trunks. In my work everyone lives happily ever after.
DeleteThanks for talking about your own personal experiences, Michelle. It's interesting to me that most of the experience I'm pulling from when I think about this subject comes from my art classes. I guess the idea of being taught art leads to a lot of questioning on my part--hearing rules and all that. I need to organize my thoughts and write a post on this.
ReplyDeleteI know you are extremely busy, so thank you for taking the time to comment! I can't wait for your post tomorrow. :)
DeleteI think ultimately, it's the reader. Because it's the reader who's going to decide whether to tell his friends a book was good or not. It's the reader who's going to decide whether he wants to buy more from that author. It's the reader who keeps that book on the shelves, so to speak. But a very thought provoking question!
ReplyDeleteApril, your comment has made me stop and think...because if the text is the ultimate authority, I'm not sure that works without a reader. If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around, does it make a sound? The answer is no because there are no eardrums for the sound waves to play off of. It's like an explosion in space. Silent. So while I believe the text is the ultimate authority, I don't believe it can be so without the reader. It's a relationship that must exist with both, of course. I just consider the author one of those readers - probably the one who cares the most. :)
DeleteI think it's very contextual. In a classroom, the teacher may be the assumed authority on the text. In a reading group, the majority opinion may hold the weight. When I'm at home reading for pleasure, I am the authority.
ReplyDeleteAs to whether it matters: In the classroom it probably matters if you are a student concerned with your grade in the class; in the reading group it matters less, but still may matter for those who feel uncomfortable presenting contradictory viewpoints; for me reading at home, it doesn't matter at all.
I like the Capote quote, that's very relevant to this discussion. I published an origins-of-Santa book, and one reviewer said "readers have to buy into the quick-change redemption of a nasty ...kid villain" which I actually thought was funny, because the reviewer didn't seem to have issues buying into elves, flying reindeer, or a forest hidden under the ice at the North Pole. Also, I'm comfortable with that character's arc and can point to numerous textual references that expose his motivations and set the stage for his redemption, beginning with scene in which that character is first introduced.
But I am not the authority on that reader's interpretation. I'm just the author, and what I think I put into the book might not be so obvious to the casual reader.
Rick, that's a really, really good point about it being contextual. And I couldn't help but smile at the reader who seemed to buy into everything else except the redemption part. Awesome. :)
DeleteIn this climate, getting published means input from an agent, editor and whoever else has say in getting published. It's all about selling product. Maybe it began as art, but after everyone's input getting the book on the shelves, and possibly diluting the content, it's product. After an author dominates the best seller lists for a while can it be considered the writer's work.
ReplyDeleteFor me, what Jabez said rings true for me. The text is the final say. If an author's work lasts 500 years, people and experiences will differ greatly, and interpretation will obviously change.
Charlie, I beg to say that even after an author dominates the best seller list, their book is still product. It's always product as long as it's out there for consumption. Ugh. That makes it sound so awful. This is why getting published was a little bit of a shock for me. The whole "product" thing takes some getting used to.
DeleteWriters certainly dream the hardest, spend the most time, and invest the most emotionally in a book. But that doesn't necessarily mean that a writer understands his book the best. My writing teacher said that we had to be quiet during critiques in order to 'understand the penguin.' For example, say you write a story about a penguin. You talk about all things penguin-y. The class reads the penguin story. But when the critiques come: no one mentions a penguin. They didn't see a penguin. They see a walrus.
ReplyDeletePart of my teacher's argument was that the critiques would help us write with greater clarity...so next time people would understand that the story is about a friggin' penguin, by golly! But I think it goes to this conversation as well. We weren't allowed to talk when people chatted about how great our walrus story was because we wouldn't be able to 'correct' our readers in real life - what was on the page, was on the page. That's it.
However, if you just have a text...you just have a text. With no one creating it and no one reading it...it's just paper (or a computer screen).
A text comes to life when people interpret it. And I think I ultimately agree with April, that it's the reader (this includes, the critic and the academic, because what are they except for readers who talk about the text?) who determines the meaning of a piece. I think once the book is 'out' - available to the public - the writer still has a voice for as long as they can speak, but the author's should be one voice out of many. As much work as they put into the piece, there are others, readers, who might actually be more dedicated to it. People have dedicated their entire lives and careers to the works of Shakespeare, the Brontes, and there are some nutty readers out there dedicated to just Ulysses by James Joyce - who didn't spend his entire life or career on that one book. And if anyone knows what that book is about, I'm betting it's those academics....
Jenny, sorry it took me so long to respond to your comment. I actually read it right when it came through, and ever since then, I've been thinking about the penguin thing. What a great example, thank you. April's comment made me stop, and so does yours because I think you're both right that there does have to be an interaction there. The author, for me, is another reader of the work who happens to have more valid information and insight on the subject than most. I'm still mulling over all of this in my head. Great food for thought. :)
DeleteI'm kind of thinking it doesn't matter what others think. Everyone will bring something new to the table. All that ever really matters is what you take from the story.
ReplyDeleteWriting is an art, so I'll compare it to an exercise we did in my dance class. We all watched the same dance, and then we were asked to guess the story. Everyone had such different ideas from funerals, drugs to cancer. Even though we later saw what the dance was meant to be about, we learned how people interpret it is different. There was evidence to support all those stories, though some made more sense than others. The overall theme was the same too.
So who's to say the interpretations matter if people will interpret everything differently? I disagree with there being a real authority. As long as there is evidence, and the person believes in their own interpretations, they should be the authority for themselves.
It's like reading a review. Some reviews are really positive about books that didn't work for me and some readers don't like books I love. No one's really wrong, and that's what makes our society awesome- people aren't scared (for the most part) to share their opinions.
Great post, it's gotten me thinking which is always good. :)
P.E. - It's definitely all subjective! If I've learned one thing in this lifetime, it's that. But I also think there will always be readers out there who feel the author is the ultimate authority, and then you get super-interesting discussions in college classrooms. :)
DeleteHere are some of my thoughts, based on some of my experiences, both as writer, reader, and re-interpreter (adaptations, spec scripts.)
ReplyDeleteEveryone who writes, is writing, essentially about themselves, or parts of their experience, that then join with other influences in the creative process. Regardless, the author is the kernel that starts the story, adding technique, inspiration, example, experience, and etc., until the story has an identity and reality of its own.
Every story is very personal, and has a very personal subtext for the writer. As you engage with it, you have associations with it no one else will ever have, because you know how you felt and what you were doing when you wrote that line, or ended that chapter.
The reader will also have this subtext, associating what they were reading with what was happening to them at the time. They are the ultimate authority of what the story means _to them_. The author, however, must be given the respect that they are the ultimate authority on _their_ intention of what the story means and who its -- their -- characters and cosmology are.
Which leads me to ask if the question isn't "who is the ultimate authority", but who is the 'owner' of the story, the reader or the writer? Legally, certainly, it should be the writer (and publisher, etc.), yet how many of us have met people who insist that _they_ are the true owners of the stories and/or characters created and presented by someone else, because of their sense of identification with them? (These people usually insist that the creator of 'their' story got it wrong, because their version is the 'true' one, and they actually want, more than anything, for the author to recognize this and agree.)
The experience of story, both as a writer and a reader is an intense and intensely personal experience. A reader doesn't care to be told by an author that their understanding and experience of the story is 'wrong', that the what they see in the mirror of the story, is flawed.
A writer doesn't care to be told that they don't understand their own work, when they do, and if they hadn't, the person lecturing to them would never, ever have even been aware of the story. Both of these people are 'right', and both of them have a deeply personal stake (sometimes), in the other being 'wrong', because of their relationship with the story.
So perhaps a question we should also ask is, where, on the part of the reader, does legitimate interpretation and experience of a story end, and a sense of possession and entitlement begin?
On the other hand, shooting your child, when your intention has always been to send the child out to the world in search of creating a dialog, seems to be a bit of a whacko expectation, too.
Where should we draw the lines between the 'ownership' of the reader and the writer? What are the appropriate expectations they should have of each other? It is easy to favor the writer in this one, just go read Misery for a compelling argument on their behalf.
On the other hand, perhaps the reader is the one who is done wrong by the writer, who has arguably led the reader on, laid out the 'rules' of the world that the reader has invested money, time, and emotion in, and then, because they were bored, or angry, or just tired, changed everything, without explanation, or even good cause. I know this has happened to me more than once, and it is a definite wounding experience. (Don't get me wrong, psychopathic is psychopathic, and unbalanced is unbalanced, but we're dealing with very powerful associations here, some of which aren't fully realized by either reader or writer.)
Do you think these questions / opinions / observances have any relevance to the discussion?
Esther, thank you for your thoughts! I think they have definite relevance to the discussion. The reason I think that the "shooting child" expression works is because I, myself as an author, have felt that when I put my books out there, that is EXACTLY how it feels. So it feels spot-on for me, that's all. You have a great point about the ultimate authority actually being the ultimate owner, etc.
DeleteYou ask: Where, on the part of the reader, does legitimate interpretation and experience of a story end, and a sense of possession and entitlement begin? I think it depends on the reader and how invested they are in a story. I argue that if a reader is a lazy reader (and dare I say ignorant?), their "ownership" of a story is much less valid than, say, a reader who has invested years of their life to studying a particular story.
I know that I've talked with some readers about a piece of work of mine, and it was clear that they did not read very deeply into the story. They missed some crucial elements that tied the story together, and therefore, they ended up not liking the book. So who is correct in that situation? The reader or the writer? I would say the writer is correct, int that instance, because the reader did not take the time to thoroughly examine the text. Maybe this calls for another post. :)
Like art, fiction touches us each differently, all in accordance with our own individual quirks - our life experiences colour our perceptions; of everything.
ReplyDeleteAs no one person's life is the exact same as another's, there are as many interpretations of a work as there are people reading it. What that means, really, is that there is no ultimate authority over a work; everyone is the ultimate authority over a work.
S.M., thank you for your comment. :) I think that's the definition I'm quickly arrive at, but after answering the comment above, I'm wondering if a person can only call themselves an authority of a work if they have read it thoroughly. I would hesitate to call a lazy reader an authority if they have only read on the surface of a story and didn't take the time to really study it, if that makes sense.
DeleteI don't think there is an ultimate authority on a piece of fiction. We writers create for our own self-serving purposes, but we enjoy when readers delight in our wordsmithery. Who's to say?
ReplyDeleteM.E. - Oh! That's an interesting take on it... I like that! Because I know that for me, my writing is ultimately a self-serving purpose in the beginning. I want to think about this a bit more. Great point. :)
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