"the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author" (877) -Barthes
When I first dove into Barthes' dense pursuit into his concept of the "death of the author," my instincts could not help out but nag at what I believe I was taught in school. For the most part, I was bothered by the nonexistence of the author before the work he or she publishes. The classification of a published work seems enough of a label to allow it to be synonymous with the author. To completely separate an author in one book from the same author under a different seems to rob the personality from that particular name.
One of the questions that comes to mind is, why write at all? If an author can only exist with a single particular work, and his writing only becomes an interpretation of the reader, he ceases to exist altogether.
But when you look around at today's works, be they media, spoken, or written, it appears that much of the work's persona and content are judged against the author's reputation. Each author has a style, and many authors are recognized directly within certain genres, having been successfully published in them. There are also authors we are also musicians, elected officials, children, and athletes. The birth of the blogger is a game changer that is rapidly climbing in its ability to not only connect but grant the powers of a public voice, to become a social journalist. In many ways, the title of Author has transformed over the years, and I believe because of the efficiency of internet and our amazing technology, the line often wavers between reader and author.
When reading this piece I immediately think of Ong's discussion of letter writing in "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction."
ReplyDeleteOng says, "Although by writing a letter you are somehow pretending the reader is present while you are writing, you cannot address him as you do in oral speech. You must fictionalize him, make him into a special construct," (19). Blogging, especially commenting on blogs, helps alleviate some of the fictionalizing that one must do in a letter.
I can read an article online, comment on in, and if the author of that article is still on that page, they can respond almost immediately to what I have posted. While the author certainly does not know me, and so must fictionalize me in the sense that they cannot see me and read my immediate physical response to their blog (am I grimacing? smiling? Are my arms crossed in frustration?) they can read the very real response in my text.
I agree with you that "the line often wavers between reader and author," because the immediacy of the internet complicates the notion of who is entitled to give a text meaning. It seems now our written/typed communication can resemble in many ways the oral speech Aristotle discusses, because the reactions of our readers can be sometimes almost immediate.