I imagine that many people reading this are familiar with Roland Barthes’ influential short piece The Death of the Author. I read this piece at the very beginning of graduate school, and at a time when I assumed that most work I undertook would be on quite literally dead authors. It seems somehow easier to debate the possible influence of authorial intention on textual analysis when the input available about said intention is finite–and finite of necessity because that author will never write anything ever again. (I do understand the glee that scholars of dead authors feel when some hitherto unknown packet of letters, or lost volume of journals is discovered because that dead author now seems to live once again, for a moment. But even so, the oeuvre of that author has only expanded, not revivified.) Applying the analytical framework suggested by The Death of the Author seems simpler, even when reading a piece in which an author is clearly stating their intentions about a particular work, when even the author’s meta-discourse on their works is bounded by their literal death.
When I began my dissertation, it focused on four books by (then) four living authors. Piri Thomas, Giannina Braschi, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, and Black Artemis (aka Sofía Quintero). I had never met any of these people and perhaps never expected to. I doubt, quite honestly, that I ever gave the matter of whether I would meet them much thought. My surprise, then, was unbounded when I found a message in, of all places, my Facebook inbox, signed “Edgar” which turned out to be from Edgardo Vega Yunqué. He had discovered our names linked together in a conference program: mine as a presenter, and his name in the title of my presentation. We began a correspondence which lasted a scant three months. Vega first wrote to me in June 2008, and on August 26, 2008 he died suddenly.
It was awkward, and perhaps bizarrely terrifying to have this correspondence with him. As well trained as I have been in Barthes, it is hard to let go of the knee-jerk emotional reaction that the author, should the author speak on the subject, is the only one who can say with true and absolute authority: “Literary critic, you are wrong.” Even with this terror, I sent him an early draft of my chapter on The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle. (Now I thank my stars that I did send him an “early draft.” Had I followed my fear and waited until the draft was “ready,” he would already have been gone.) The first paragraph of his response to me will always stand as one of the most moving pieces of praise I’ve ever received.
Wow!
I’m an extremist: hypercritical, argumentative, cantankerous, intimidating when threatened, often loud and overbearing and I don’t suffer fools well. I am, as described by an ex-lover a veritable enfant terrible, all of it by design to protect a fragile heart. However, at the other extreme stands a very fair, admiring person who will gush at beauty, elegance and a job well done. Sin duda alguna, tu labor es sensasional y mucho más. And not because you’re writing about my work, but because your keen analysis of literature is so accurate and more so when it has to do with our situation as Puerto Ricans. Bravo, bambina!
It is, I recognize, as irrational to be afraid of an author’s censure as it is to be elated by an author’s praise. And yet I suspect that I am not the only one who works with the texts of living authors who has felt this way. I further suggest that feeling this way is not in itself a problem, I think perhaps it shows a healthy respect for the importance of the creative process that the author goes through. Rather than struggling to “let go” of the emotional reaction, I have found that I need to balance that emotional response with an attention to the rigor of my own work. I cannot allow myself to believe that my work is important because Vega said it is, any more than I should have allowed myself to believe my work dreck if he had so averred. The process of literary creation and of literary criticism must be fundamentally intellectually independent, but I think we who work with live author’s work would be fooling ourselves if we refused to believe in an emotional connection, however tenuous.
My next short project is shaping up to be an article length work–coauthored with a colleague of mine–on one of Black Artemis’ books, her debut novel in fact, Explicit Content. Sofía Quintero and I have not met, but we follow each other’s work, primarily on Twitter, where I recently mentioned undertaking this project. She is, naturally, curious about the project. Once again, I find myself balancing the pulls of scholarship–which even when co-authoring is an amazingly solitary pursuit–and of collegiality with the community of authorship that my work places me in touch with.
I have recently sent Ms Quintero a copy of the chapter I wrote on her Picture Me Rollin’, and I anticipate more fruitful conversations with her, Barthes’ assertions about her death notwithstanding.
For me, the interesting question that emerges from Barthes is about meaning-making. If we take postmodernism for granted, it’s easy to accept his contention that we can’t really make texts ultimately knowable — and yet, we are still moved by them, want to engage with and discuss them. How exactly does that work in a world where it can be taken as read that everyone has an individual experience of a text and we’ll never really know anyone else’s experience? this might be the interesting crux of human nature!
Live author here. *waving* 🙂
One of the best experiences I ever had engaging readers of my work was at Syracuse University. Dr. Gwendolyn Pough had assigned PICTURE ME ROLLIN’ to her students (she teaches English and women’s studies and the course was about hip-hop) and invited me to come speak to them about the novel. One question that I was asked was, “Does Jesus really love Espe?” As you’ll recall Jesus consistently professes love for Espe and occasionally is kind to her, but he is also ritually abusive and manipulative.
My answer, as the person who created the character was, “Well, if you ask Jesus himself, he does love her. According to his psychology, his abuse is an expression of how deeply he does love her. He believes he does love her. But if you ask me, he doesn’t because I personally believe, as Espe learns from bell hooks and comes to believe for herself, love and abuse cannot coexist.” I thought it was a valid question, a juicy one at that. It never crossed my mind, “Geez, if you need to ask that, something is wrong with one of us.”
Dr. Pough immediately challenged me, saying, “He doesn’t love her.” And some of her students nodded their heads. “He doesn’t love her, and he knows he doesn’t love her. This is all part of his game.” There were a few wide eyes in the room when Dr. Pough pushed back; my guess is that some students thought I would be offended by anyone telling me about my own work. How does she invite the author to speak to us and then tell her about her own book???
On the contrary, I relished every second of it. To me it was a compliment of the highest order that we were discussing Jesus as if he were a real person. When my readers read into spaces that I have created — be they inadvertently or purposefully — I feel that I have succeeded as a storyteller. I don’t want people just to relate to the material the moment of engagement; I want them to continue to think about it and, like Sarah said, make their own meaning. This is a basic tenant of media literacy and the reason why that all media — including entertainment media from the most commercial television show to the popcorn flick to the trashy romance novel — are political and should be engaged with a critical eye.
Does this mean that I will always agree or like how people read my work? Of course not. As an activist, I do write with an agenda, and I make no apologies for it so if I get the impression that someone is selectively reading the text with their own agenda — attending to certain parts of the story while conveniently ignoring others as it suits them — then I take issue. Then I want to talk back, clarify and defend (whether I should or not is a whole other story.) I personally am fine with someone understanding my position and disagreeing with it. I loath, however, being misunderstood, especially if I feel that the misunderstanding/misrepresentation comes from a place of wanting to impose silence than create dialogue.
I don’t feel merely flattered when scholars such as Gwendolyn Pough, Mark Anthony Neal, Clara Rodriguez, and yourself find my work worthy of the level of analysis you invest in it. As an a cultural activist and an intellectual (even though I decided to pursue the artistic rather than academic path), I embrace it as a show of support in this “it’s-just-a-book” culture. It is extremely difficult for an author as myself — a radical feminist of color who is trying to raise sociopolitical issues via commercial fiction — to get a foothold in the mainstream publishing industry. The treatment that you give my work tells me that it matters. Whatever critique you may have of it is still an affirmation that these stories should exist.
I haven’t finished the chapter you so generously shared with me, but I have already learned a great deal not just about my own work but even more about the very issues that I attempted to raise. As I read, I’m learning where I nailed it, where I came up short, where are my biases, where are my strengths, etc. It is a thousand times more helpful to my growth as a novelist, activist, feminist, and overall human being than any criticism I might get from a literary trade magazine. There’s a certain magic, if you will, that occurs when creating media, especially when one is storytelling and even more so when one is weaving tales with a socio-political agenda. Things come through you on to the page or screen or canvas that you didn’t realize was there. The literary analysis serves as a mirror to one’s own subconscious. Very few of us have the good fortune to see ourselves — what we think, feel, fear, want and value at our very core — reflected back to us from an objective party. It’s good stuff both artistically and spiritually if we are open to it. I think this can be the most valuable thing about creating a story and allowing others to make their own meaning of it. After all, even if we write for ourselves (as we ultimately should), there is a limit to what we can get from it not only materially but emotionally and spiritually if we choose not to share it with others.
This is why if you proceed with this project and choose not to ask me questions about it, I’m cool with that. Not only because I understand some of the politics of the academy and can imagine how it may not be in your interest to have my perceptions of my own work “taint” your own. But also because you have the right to have your own perceptions and to make your own meaning whether it’s as a casual reader consuming the novel for recreational purpose, an intellectual mining it for social relevance, etc. There may be a point where you may want a definitive answer to a specific intention, choice, etc. and I’d be happy to answer. But how you read it — whether my so-called definitive answer jibes with your reading or not — is just as important. After all, it says something if, for example, if it really, really mattered to me that readers see Jesus as someone who, in his mind, truly loves Espe and not someone who consciously manipulates her, and I failed to do it. That would be on me as a writer. My intention, and whether or not I fulfilled it, in and of itself becomes a valid point of inquiry.
And I’ve come to learn and embrace that there are going to be plenty of times when what I intended is irrelevant and how you (or any other reader) interpret it is what matter most. In the end, what really matters is that the work resonates in some way. Speaking for myself, the only thing that would bother me would be a WHOLESALE misreading of the work. I just got a rave review of my young adult novel that I think completely misses the mark. Like I said, I’d rather be attacked for a correct reading of my position so seeing this rave took me aback. I had to remind myself that the person who wrote this review came to it with his own filter, and if I want to write for an audience, I have to roll with these occasional off-the-wall (or what seems to me to as off-the-wall) interpretations. Again, I can accept that more readily than the (anonymous) reviewer who did a sloppy reading of another novel (e..g didn’t get basic facts right) and skewered it for its “Latino and homosexual rights agenda.” And even in that case, after some initial seething, I eventually shrugged it off as pissing off the right people. If everyone gets or love what you’re doing, then you have to ask yourself if what you’re doing has any value. Also, we artists constantly have to remember that we are never as good or as terrible as anyone who critiques our work says, lol! Not everyone who loves it is brilliant and not everyone who hates it is stupid or a hater. Some raves are off-the-mark and some rants make valid points.
All this is to say that I’m here at your service, but if it better serves you for me NOT to be here, well, then I’m still at your service. 🙂
Twitter: PhDeviate
replied:
Your comment reminds me of reading Julia Alvarez’s ¡Yo!, her exploration of what happens after the novel. Of the world around the novelist who has published the (unavoidably?) semi-autobiographical novel.
As a young person, I was madly addicted to L.M. Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books as well as many others. I read all of her selected journals (Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterson). In these journals she will occasionally reproduce her “press” verbatim. When I was re-reading the “Emily” series, I was tickled to notice that some of her press returned in that novel to be lampooned. People who reviewed her books would (among other things) utterly fail to know where Prince Edward Island even was. And she “got ’em back” so to speak, by using their ignorance in future books.
Not quite to the point of how the (living) author and the careful critic can generate a useful dialog, but it’s gotta be worth something for the living author to generate some laughs off the careless critic!
And thank you for your thoughtful comment!