# The artist is WRONG about his own work. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 12, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900 "2014-07-12T00:07:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/21 "2014-07-12T14:16:46Z")
The entire question is based on the premise that texts have intrinsic meanings. But texts don’t have intrinsic meanings. Meaning is something that emerges from individual encounters with texts and it depends as much upon the circumstances of the encounter as it does on the text itself. Texts only appear to have intrinsic meanings because often they are produced and consumed within a closed interpretive community with shared normative assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/22 "2014-07-12T14:25:56Z")
Ray Bradbury wasn’t wrong to say\*\*\* Fahrenheit 451\*\*\* isn’t really about censorship. Even in the book itself, Guy Montague’s boss tells him that book burnings are mainly just for show- that people don’t really want to read any more, and haven’t in ages. Oh, the Powers That Be in Bradbury’s world are certainly HAPPY that people no longer read, and prefer mindless entertainment to thinking… but they don’t really HAVE to censor anything, because most ordinary folks don’t want to think about politics or war or anything complicated or unpleasant anyway. - Now, as to the larger question: if an author tells you something about his work, should we take his word for it? Of course not. Sometimes what the author tells us is plainly untrue, and even the author doesn’t want us to believe it. The preface to _ **Huckleberry Finn** _ tells us the book has no plot or messages, and that anyone who seeks them should be shot. You really think there’s no plot or message in that book? Samuel Beckett always denied that his stories or plays meant anything. Waiting for Godot sure LOOKS like an allegory for Man futilely hoping God will reveal himself and give our lives meaning, but Beckett always insisted it was merely a comedy “about people who are like that.” Believe him? Neither do I. But sometimes an artist has valid reasons for giving an implausible interpretation of his work. For instance: 1. Sometimes, they just forget! Every day, people ask Bob Dylan the meaning of some song he dashed off in a few minutes nearly 50 years ago. He probably doesn’t REMEMBER what he was thinking when he wrote it, let alone what it all “means.” 2. Sometimes, a character or a story takes on a life of its own while an author is at work. An author who meant a character to turn out one way may end up creating a very different character. John Milton surely DIDN’T intend Satan to be as compelling, interesting or even likable as he often was in _ **Paradise Lost.** _ He probably would have denied that Satan had any redeeming qualities. ---
**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:** [July 12, 2014, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/23 "2014-07-12T14:31:31Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > The entire question is based on the premise that texts have intrinsic meanings. > > But texts don’t have intrinsic meanings. Meaning is something that emerges from individual encounters with texts and it depends as much upon the circumstances of the encounter as it does on the text itself. It’s weird that you can express your meaning so clearly. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/24 "2014-07-12T14:40:51Z")
**The Hamster King** , what you say is technically true, but sometimes the only “shared normative assumption” that’s needed to interpret a work and realize that the author is lying is knowledge of the English language. > [@](#): > > Quoth **ZipperJJ** : > > “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” not being about LSD is such a crock of shit. Like, really John. Perhaps you dropped acid and dreamt your son drew a picture of a classmate. [The picture actually exists.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-459145/Revealed-The-real-Lucy-sky-diamonds.html) Certainly the Beatles were using LSD, and certainly that’s a major influence on the lyrics of this song (and probably others), but the title appears not to actually be a deliberate reference. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/25 "2014-07-12T15:21:10Z")
_Lucy in the Sky_ describes things that could be a drug trip, but damn have you never been a child? Have you never listened to a child create a scene or a place? They can and do pull wild, colorful, and disconnected imagery and combine them however they want. Julian’s picture is par for the course. (If LSD makes you think like a child, it’s no wonder people use it.) Anyone who insists that the magical world of\* Pan’s Labyrinth\* is imaginary is equally as wrong as those who says it’s all real. It’s neither and both at the same time. The best art is open to interpretation, often beyond the author’s imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/26 "2014-07-12T15:38:41Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > The entire question is based on the premise that texts have intrinsic meanings. Derrida’s dead, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/27 "2014-07-12T16:00:32Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The Battle of Five Armies = World War I There’s definitely a whole lot of WW1-WW2 influence on the way battles happen in Tolkien. The greatest influence to me seems to be the constant trope of armies being relieved or reinforced at a crucial moment (B5A being a great example of this). Which of course happened in the real world in pre-modern times, but not as often as when armies had mechanical assistance in transportation. Another modern warfare influence to me is how easy it is to block a main army. In pre-modern warfare it was very easy to skirt around an enemy army with your main force if you wanted to. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any small raiding parties in Tolkien, but once you have two large field armies, I can’t think of an example where the two armies don’t meet in a siege or a head on set piece battle. It’s never even “well, we tried to block the passage to our cities but the enemy went around us and is laying siege to our towns anyway, so we have to skirt back to engage them.” ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/28 "2014-07-12T16:05:20Z")
I read a book a few years ago that argued that Holmes was wrong about who the murderer was in **The Hound of the Baskervilles**. I can’t remember the book’s title, or the “actual” murderer, for that matter, but the author had a very convincing argument. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/29 "2014-07-12T16:41:09Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I read a book a few years ago that argued that Holmes was wrong about who the murderer was in **The Hound of the Baskervilles**. I can’t remember the book’s title, or the “actual” murderer, for that matter, but the author had a very convincing argument. You’re probably thinking of _Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the “Hound of the Baskervilles”_, by Pierre Bayard. IIRC, he argued that the “real” killer was: Beryl Stapleton, who fully intended for her husband to be suspected of the crime. Once Jack Stapleton was out of the way, she’d be free to marry Sir Henry Baskerville for his money…and likely kill him, too. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/30 "2014-07-12T18:13:58Z")
Apart from the fact that “This song has strange lyrics - it _must_ be about/the product of drugs” is such a boring observation to make, why would songwriters lie about the meaning of their songs? Was John Lennon afraid people might somehow get the impression he had dabbled in drug usage? Did he think “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was such a cunningly-concealed reference that he could fool everyone, failing to consider those few geniuses who could crack the code and spend the next 50 years acting like they alone had come up with this entirely untiresome theory? ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/31 "2014-07-12T18:16:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > [The picture actually exists.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-459145/Revealed-The-real-Lucy-sky-diamonds.html) Certainly the Beatles were using LSD, and certainly that’s a major influence on the lyrics of this song (and probably others), but the title appears not to actually be a deliberate reference. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/32 "2014-07-12T19:03:52Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > 1. Sometimes, they just forget! Every day, people ask Bob Dylan the meaning of some song he dashed off in a few minutes nearly 50 years ago. He probably doesn’t REMEMBER what he was thinking when he wrote it, let alone what it all “means.” In his memoir, Pete Townshend of The Who says that he has to interpret the meaning of some of his early songs the same way a critic would, because he can’t remember what he was actually thinking at the time. It was a long time ago, he was sometimes up against a deadline, there were a lot of other things going on in his life, and he also used plenty of drugs back then. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/33 "2014-07-12T19:07:46Z")
As always, there’s a TV tropes entry, [Lying Creator](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LyingCreator) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/34 "2014-07-12T19:13:51Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > There’s definitely a whole lot of WW1-WW2 influence on the way battles happen in Tolkien. The greatest influence to me seems to be the constant trope of armies being relieved or reinforced at a crucial moment (B5A being a great example of this). Which of course happened in the real world in pre-modern times, but not as often as when armies had mechanical assistance in transportation. > > Another modern warfare influence to me is how easy it is to block a main army. In pre-modern warfare it was very easy to skirt around an enemy army with your main force if you wanted to. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any small raiding parties in Tolkien, but once you have two large field armies, I can’t think of an example where the two armies don’t meet in a siege or a head on set piece battle. It’s never even “well, we tried to block the passage to our cities but the enemy went around us and is laying siege to our towns anyway, so we have to skirt back to engage them.” OTOH, unlike his own experience in the Somme, Tolkien’s battles are heroic, fast-moving and _quick_. I like to think that they’re the battles young Lt. Tolkien liked to \*imagine \*he was fighting instead of the endless, murderous slog he was being forced to participate in. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/35 "2014-07-12T19:59:56Z")
Re: Tolkien. The whole Band of Brothers thing, and how you can never go home again. The lasting effects of war. What Sam represents…Of course that stuffs there. Shit, it’s very difficult to understand why Frodo goes on the boat without it. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/36 "2014-07-12T20:11:13Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > You’re probably thinking of _Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the “Hound of the Baskervilles”_, by Pierre Bayard. IIRC, he argued that the “real” killer was: > > Beryl Stapleton, who fully intended for her husband to be suspected of the crime. Once Jack Stapleton was out of the way, she’d be free to marry Sir Henry Baskerville for his money…and likely kill him, too. Wait, the same guy who said the confessed killer in _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ wasn’t either? What’s with this dude? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/37 "2014-07-12T21:53:04Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > Most artists, I think, are not really aware of what they’re doing. It’s hard to imagine that Shakespeare could have had the least notion of all the interpretations of Hamlet. . . . Ever so long ago, I wrote a story about cats and dogs, living together in separate enclaves in one big city. People who read it congratulated me on my allegory regarding inner city racial relations. I never intended that! But, reading it, I can see how they see it that way. It actually works better that way than the way I intended the story. Was it unconscious allegorizing? Or just foolish luck? Damn if I know! > [@Lamia](#): > > You’re probably thinking of _Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the “Hound of the Baskervilles”_, by Pierre Bayard. . . . I searched for it, and was astonished to see it’s an entire book! I could easily see it being an essay, but a bloody book? $9.00 plus on Kindle? C’mon, guy, get real! (But…ah…how good is it, in your opinion? Do I want to shell out the bucks? Is it witty, clever, and fun? Or is it revisionist tripe? Or…?) ---
**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:** [July 12, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/38 "2014-07-12T22:44:39Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Re: Tolkien. > > The whole Band of Brothers thing, and how you can never go home again. The lasting effects of war. What Sam represents…Of course that stuffs there. Shit, it’s very difficult to understand why Frodo goes on the boat without it. Tolkien didn’t deny that WWI was an influence on LotR, he just said that it wasn’t an allegory (using as a professor would, the technical meaning of the word), and wasn’t particularly influenced by WWII. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/39 "2014-07-12T22:55:38Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Ever so long ago, I wrote a story about cats and dogs, living together in separate enclaves in one big city. What, no mass hysteria? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/40 "2014-07-12T23:58:04Z")
Well, Lemur Maddox stood in the school doorway with an ax-handle to oppose integration, but, otherwise… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900.md?page=3)