I’m an authority on auctorial intent. When I was writing the introduction for my book of short stories I realized something about my work that never occurred to me while writing it or all the reads thereafter. In my story about a T-Rex theme park I had named my main character by a name I had picked out of thin air because I liked it. Teesha. You all will have seen it instantly. Tee-sha. Nope. Not me.
The relationship of authors to their works has been the subject of multiple schools of criticism and scholarship. Not just scholars - schools of scholars over decades and countries, often quarreling heatedly, even viciously with one another.
Each human being has a lifetime of individuality in their brains. Their thought processes are the mush of all the experiences, the reading, the viewing, the learning, the environment that forms a person. Each brain therefore will look at a group of words and interpret them individually, according to the who they have made themselves into.
Writers cannot control these individual interpretations. They cannot help be valid in some sense, even if they don’t conform to or contradict the writer’s intentions. I read Huckleberry Finn for class three times, in 8th grade, 11th grade, and in college. Each time I read a totally different book. No doubt it would have warped into something new if I were to read it today. Could Twain tell me what it really meant? Is that question even meaningful? He wrote the book in 1884 when he was 51. Would his answer have been the same if I asked him in 1896 or just before he died in 1910? Almost certainly not.
Scholars can bring a wealth of knowledge and context to a text. They cannot tell anyone what it really means. Neither can the author. Texts have a life of their own. The world changes every moment after a text has been let loose into print. How I or you or someone in 2100 approaches a text depends on a million variables. Text is the opposite of quantum entanglement. Measuring an entangled particle will always reveal properties embedded at the moment of creation. Reading never will.
Flannery O’Connor had little use for academic interpretations of her work, and was quite scornful of those who tried to read meaning into them.
In her letters, she recounted the incident when a reader asked her the significance of the Misfit’s black hat (from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”). She said that people in that social class in that part of the country often wore black hats. The reader tried to push her, but she stood firm in saying the hat had no symbolic meaning.
In another letter, she replied to a class who were all interpreting the story as a fantasy by the son driving the car, wishing his mother was dead. She took off on that, saying the only purpose of the son was to drive the car to get the grandmother to where she could meet the Misfit. She was appalled by the idea that anyone can come up with any interpretation they wanted, even if it wasn’t supported by the story.
We actually had a phrase in a class I was in – The Misfit’s Black Hat – to remind us that our interpretation might not actually be in the story.
Another example is that The Wizard of Oz was about the free coinage of silver. But that was a dying issue when the book came out, and as Cecil pointed out, it made no sense. (Don’t be confused by the title; most of it is about The Wizard of Oz, and the original article making the assertion has been refuted).
Literally all types? That’s what literature criticism is - opinions.
Yes, but CS Lewis liking chocolate ice cream doesn’t mean I have to like chocolate ice cream. And, similarly, CS Lewis thinking Narnia is best enjoyed by reading it in chronological order doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it in chronological order.
(Disclaimer: I’ve never read Narnia, and don’t have an actual opinion on whether or not it should be read chronologically.)
I’ll also talk about the author’s point of view. Many years ago, I wrote a story The Transformation that eventually appeared in an anthology. I didn’t have any particular intent other than to write a good story.
Years later, I reread it and discovered it was partly a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a relationship of mine that fell apart. I had not thought about that when I was writing.
So a story can have elements that the author doesn’t realize were there while they were writing it.
Another example of this is the story “More Than the Sum of HIs Parts” by Joe Haldeman. He had no particular subtext in mind, but a reader pointed out to him that it was about the time he was wounded in Vietnam. Haldeman realized that was true.
So the author may have hidden meanings without realizing them, but it’s the author who has to determine if they are valid.
The person who wrote to Lewis about the order of the books was Lawrence Krieg, who was 11 years old at the time. Lewis was being polite to him when he replied that it was O.K. to read the books in the order of events in Narnia. Walter Hooper never had the rights to the books. He was merely able to influence the people who did have the rights.
Nick Cave at the fascinating The Red Hand Files was asked about the meaning of Rings of Saturn. His reply begins:
There is great danger in asking a songwriter to explain their songs – or at least to make the assumption that their interpretation is in some way more valid or true than your own. This is simply not the case. I believe the fan often has a deeper understanding of a given song than its creator. Sometimes, I feel that I am the last to know what one of my own songs actually means. Sometimes, they take many years to reveal themselves. With that in mind, as you’ve asked, I will tell you what I think is going on in ‘Rings of Saturn’. I only hope my answer does not diminish the value of the song for you.
Thanks for reminding me of that story, which I did not recall until I just re-read it online. It appears in the collection Earth Is Room Enough, and I would wager good money that the incident I recounted above is mentioned in his introduction to the story in that book. My copy is in storage, so if anyone here happened to have the book close at hand and were inclined to confirm this, I would be curious to see how well my so-called brain remembered it.
Just checked my copy … and it has no story introductions !
(But then, it has the story name wrong in the contents page (“An Immortal Bard”)
so it’s probably one of those cheapo compilations (it’s published by Panther books))
I strongly believe that authors are heavily influenced in ways they are not consciously aware of, and that this can be explored by scholars (who, I also think, really need to strive for rigor and not just making things up, as they in-turn are influenced by many things).
A major reason I believe this is because when I was in high school I wrote a poem. But I didn’t really write it, it just sorta “plopped” out onto the page if that makes sense. At the time it read like gibberish, and it took me about half-a-year before I was able to make sense of it. I strongly believe this poem was shaped by my unconscious.
A few other examples I don’t have cites for off to of my head: (as we all know, the plural of uncited antidote is data):
Simon and Garfunkel song “sound of silence” is very popular and has lots of meaning to many people (myself included), But Simon and Garfunkel, apparently. didn’t like the song and thought it was simple and immature (I don’t remember exact words).
I think Orsen Scott Card is a walking example. Ender’s Game seems to be very anti-war, but Orsen Scott Card disagrees. Some of his works strongly seem to support LGTQ rights (or at least discuss their mistreatment), while Card again doesn’t agree.
On the other hand, I’m typing this from memory, and don’t have the cites to back these examples up. (and have a meeting in a minute, so don’t really have time to google…)
Yes - and if I recall correctly, the context was about rereading the books, not reading them for the first time. Reading the books in internal chronological order would be interesting- reading them for the first time in internally chronological order would (in my opinion) spoil the fun
PS. Krieg was the nephew of John W. Campbell, Jr.
PPS. The Asimov story is in his autobiography - Asimov became friendly with the professor afterwards and accepted that he had seen things in the story that Asimov had not consciously intended but which were nevertheless, interesting insights.
I did think of that, but that’s kind of a weak connection to me, so I didn’t think that could be it. So I can see the author missing it, and as a reader I would not have thought it intentional, anyway.
That’s what I’m saying as well. If the author doesn’t leave any breadcrumbs, and there’s a publication order and a chronological order, then people are free to argue and decide to read them however they want.
But when there’s a pretty clear statement from the author himself, why isn’t that the final word?
This all reminds me a lot of what is and isn’t canon in fandom, with these scholars basically saying that what Lewis wrote in the letter isn’t canon.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. What I’m saying is that if Kevin Feige says that there’s a specific order that his films are intended to be watched in, you’re free to watch them in whatever order you want.
But I don’t see where anyone else would have any standing to say that Feige is incorrect in what the proper order of viewing would be. At best you could say you prefer an alternate ordering, or that there are advantages of an alternate ordering.
It’s more about the scholarly presumption to essentially countermand the author about their own works and how valid that is. I mean, to me if an author says something about their own work, that seems pretty definitive. If Lewis says that the proper order is chronological, then that’s that. People are free to read them in other orders if they so desire, but I don’t get how they can go say that he’s wrong and they’re right.
