Roland Barthes essay Death of the Author really got me thinking in a new way about the relationship between literature and the author. It has always been second nature (and often times required for past courses) for me to research and analyze the past of an author in order to truly understand the meaning behind a piece of work. Barthes seems to think: “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body of writing.” Really Barthes? I just can’t seem to understand that an author would be so removed and so detached from his writing, in fact it would be disappointing for me if that were the case. Understanding both the arguments of T.S. Elliott and Barthes has raised some questions for me about the relationship between the author and the work.
Maybe it’s the generation that I’ve grown up in—the constant curiosity about the lives and histories of people. For example the reality television, E! News and countless magazines have forced me to care about the history and the happenings in others lives—and maybe this has encouraged my curiosity and desire to know about the author. Even in the music world it seems like all the most popular hits are “inspired” by experiences a pop-artist has gone through, whether it is a breakup, drug rehab or jail time!
I believe it is a fine line between disconnection and personal involvement in literature and other expressions of art. Maybe the hip-hop artists of today are letting their emotions and experiences influence too much of their work, but in the literature world I feel that if the author was completely disconnected from the work there would be little passion. Without the author, for me is seems as though the work would have less meaning and would be less sincere.
I think you make an interesting point about how TV shows like E! encourage you to think about the "author" or "star" or whatever. Certainly today, with television and the internet all around us, it is easier to get such information. How did readers relate to authors before TV and the internet? And of course, that's precisely one of Foucault's points that the author always exists as part of the business of media. None of us are so naive as to believe that what E! or People magazine is simply the truth about an author or star, right? The corporate sponsors are selling us something.
ReplyDeleteBut do you really need to know the author's life in order to feel the passion of their writing? You seem to be arguing that the passion of of a poem or play can only be appreciated if the reader knows something about the author's life. Is that true? In my experience, I rarely know very much about the author. Usually just the little paragraph that's on the back cover on the book, a paragraph put there by the publisher--but that's hardly "knowing" the author or the passions that drove him/her to write.