# Scholars disagreeing with authors about their works(?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [October 3, 2022, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656 "2022-10-03T21:41:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2022, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/81 "2022-10-05T18:28:34Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > > [@BigT](#): > > > > And literature is all about the reader’s interpretation. > > It’s not that simple. You’re removing the author from the equation. You’re minimizing the author’s work I think it’s fair to say that the importance of a work does not derive from the author’s _effort_ but from what readers get out of it. The writer works hard in the hopes that the readers will get what is intended to be gotten, but when it doesn’t work out that way, it’s the result that matters, not the intent. The author’s opinion has a place, but it isn’t a veto. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2022, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/82 "2022-10-05T19:05:34Z")
Hm. I’ve had nothing but STEM education (I haven’t taken an English class since high school and in acquiring a BS and two MS degrees, I took precisely two non-math, science or engineering courses). In the history of science there are cases of scientists being mistaken about the implications of their own theories (Einstein thought for a time that gravitational waves were not possible in General Relativity, Planck thought that his own model of black body radiation was a mere mathematical trick with no physical meaning, and most remarkably, Einstein thought he had found a flaw in quantum mechanics, but was proven wrong because he had forgotten to take into account General Relativity). If that can happen, why can’t people be mistaken about the sources and meaning of their own written works? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2022, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/83 "2022-10-05T19:15:57Z")
I’m not saying people can’t interpret works how they like, or that they can’t draw interpretations that the author may not have considered. What I’m saying is that if the author has some sort of statement like “I didn’t produce my work as an anti-war statement”, you can have an opinion that it’s anti-war because of the violent and gory nature. But it’s the idea that the critics know _better_ than the artist that I disagree with. You can disagree with the artist, but you certainly don’t know better than they do, especially on metadata type information like reading order. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2022, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/84 "2022-10-05T19:22:23Z")
The only people disagreeing with the author about the order of the books are the publishers, who decided nearly two decades after Lewis died that he was wrong about the order he published the books, but somehow never did anything about it for 7 years, except briefly mention in a letter to a young fan that it was okay for the fan to reread the books in whatever order he wanted. Everyone else is agreeing with the author’s clear original intent - if he wanted to write them in a different order, he could have - and if he wanted to change the order after publication he could have done so by contacting the publishers who were keeping the books continuously in print. Lewis did neither. Actions speak louder than words - Lewis was happy with the publication order. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2022, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/85 "2022-10-05T21:06:20Z")
> [@bump](#): > > But it’s the idea that the critics know _better_ than the artist that I disagree with. I don’t think anybody is making that argument. Instead, you’re taking one single ambiguous statement and making it into a general case about critics and authors. If a critic were to do that, you’d rightly condemn them and we’d all be with you. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/86 "2022-10-06T01:02:56Z")
Lewis was living in a time when academics loved to suppose that they could write an author’s entire biography based on material in his works, which he found both stupid and arrogant. (See his _The Personal Heresy_.) It is the root of the insane claims that Shakespeare’s plays were written by someone else (John Shakespeare was not murdered; therefore, William Shakespeare could not have written _Hamlet_.), and is also the root of the pathetic claim made years ago that _Babylon 5_ shows that J. Michael Straczynski adored his father. (It was only recently that JMS revealed his discovery that the old man was _literally_ a Nazi, but his steel-cold hatred for nearly his entire family has been well known since _B5_ was in production. The original question posed Lewis was whether he would give his approval to a child _rereading_ _Narnia_ in order of internal chronology, which is obviously fine. (I remember rereading once _The Emerald City of Oz_ by segregating Dorothy’s plot and the Nome King’s plot.) But when reading _Narnia_ cold, it is best to follow the original published order simply because, that way, you encounter the questions before the answers; it’s more fun that way. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/87 "2022-10-06T06:42:12Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > It was only recently that JMS revealed his discovery that the old man was _literally_ a Nazi, His 2019 autobiography, _Becoming Superman_ is on hoopla. It’s miraculous he survived his childhood. 😮 ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/88 "2022-10-06T10:16:26Z")
Didn’t Ray Brandbury infamously claim Farenheit 451 wasn’t about censorship or book bans, but rather about how Television was supplanting Books are the primary source of modern entertainment? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/89 "2022-10-06T11:58:13Z")
Yes - contradicting what Ray Bradbury earlier wrote in the forewords to that book in which he talks about censorship as the inspiration for the book. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/90 "2022-10-06T13:13:12Z")
It’s not that simple. To return to _Narnia_, the series is patently about Aslan, but Lewis was inspired, not by any particular religious thought at all, but by a random vision of Mr Tumnus (yet unnamed) carrying a load of presents through the snow. The muses can be tricksy girls, and by the time you have written the thing, it may have little or nothing to do with the notion that you started with. (Another example from Lewis’s circle: Sayers started _Gaudy Night_ as a novel about a woman returning after some years to Oxford and discovering that her true passion lay in the life of the mind; it was only after she’d written a good deal of it that she realized that she had found her long-sought solution to the Peter-and-Harriet problem.) Similarly, Bradbury might easily have been inspired by the thought of television replacing books, and ended up writing about active censorship. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/91 "2022-10-06T14:43:37Z")
Agreed. Inspiration is complicated ---
**Author:** ![dirtball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dirtball/32/18772_2.png) [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/92 "2022-10-06T14:54:12Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > Similarly, Bradbury might easily have been inspired by the thought of television replacing books, and ended up writing about active censorship. This might be true, and similar stories are not uncommon in the creative world. That said, Wikipedia gives us this quote from 1956, three years after the book was first published: “I wrote this book at a time when I was worried about the way things were going in this country four years ago. Too many people were afraid of their shadows; there was a threat of book burning. Many of the books were being taken off the shelves at that time. And of course, things have changed a lot in four years. Things are going back in a very healthy direction. But at the time I wanted to do some sort of story where I could comment on what would happen to a country if we let ourselves go too far in this direction, where then all thinking stops, and the dragon swallows his tail, and we sort of vanish into a limbo and we destroy ourselves by this sort of action.” It was only later that he started talking about the idea that it was supposed to be primarily a cautionary tale about the insidious influence of TV. I would be inclined to give more credence to the earlier statement, as it was given closer to the time when he wrote the book, and it seems to fit the material better. I mean, you can get “TV is evil” out of the book as it’s written, but it’s definitely a secondary theme. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/93 "2022-10-09T15:37:28Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Author: This is a story about my dog dying, and how it made me feel sad. > Critic: This story is about your unrealized romantic feelings for your mother, and her denying you became a dog dying. > Author: No, I’m sure its about a real dog. His name was Rusty. He died. I was sad. Critic: The stories we choose to tell, and how we tell them, reveal more about ourselves then we always mean to reveal. /critic The dog is real, his death is real, your grief is real. But, if your story literally is “His name was Rusty. He died. I was sad.” then the critic will say, “I’m sorry about your dog, but that’s not an interesting story.” What would make it interesting is to know of your relationship with your dog, and not just that his death caused you to be sad, but to describe that sadness, how it affected your life. And if you are describing your feelings, things may slip out that you didn’t intend. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/94 "2022-10-09T15:59:18Z")
You might say one thing when you’re actually thinking about a mother. /Cliff Clavin ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/95 "2022-10-09T16:02:57Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > then the critic will say, “I’m sorry about your dog, but that’s not an interesting story.” Well, then. Mr Critic, you’re obviously not capable of understanding emotions. Or literature. Because it inspired a generation of readers, and an Oscar winning motion picture. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/96 "2022-10-09T16:04:47Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Well, then. Mr Critic, you’re obviously not capable of understanding emotions. Or literature. Because it inspired a generation of readers, and an Oscar winning motion picture. What are you talking about? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/97 "2022-10-09T16:06:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > What are you talking about? The post with the fictional critic saying my hypothetical book is not interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/98 "2022-10-09T16:08:07Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > The post with the critic saying my hypothetical book is not interesting. What point are you trying to make, though? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/99 "2022-10-09T16:10:00Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > an Oscar winning motion picture. They don’t give Oscars for tik-tok videos. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > The post with the fictional critic saying my hypothetical book is not interesting. Your hypothetical “book” consists of 3 sentences. While “For _sale_ : _baby shoes_ , _never worn_ .” may be an interesting piece of literature, it’s not a book, and it actually _is_ all about how the reader interprets those words. And your story is not nearly as interesting. At least “For sale: used dog collar, monogrammed ‘Rusty’”, while certainly plagiarism, is much more interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2022, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656/100 "2022-10-09T17:09:45Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > They don’t give Oscars for tik-tok videos. You don’t think short clips entitled _2001: A Cat Odyssey_, _Dull Menial Racket_, and _The Whining_ have Oscar potential?!? You’ve dashed my hopes of becoming the Kubrick of Tic Tok. 😢 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scholars-disagreeing-with-authors-about-their-works/972656.md?page=6)