How valid is the author's interpretation?

[lobelia321]

The other day I posted some thoughts on an author's authority of interpretation over her own fic. Several people replied, and I found myself getting so excited by the whole thread that I decided to make a new post with all my responses and further musings.

Because, as I have discovered, I actually feel quite passionate about this!

WARNING: major late-night unrevised ramblings behind cut, and lots of 'em.



Why I believe that the author's interpretation is no more valid than anybody else's

I was going to post a po-mo rant, quoting Michel Foucault's 'What is an Author?' and Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' (and yes, you can tell I'm preparing teaching, can't you? I just collated photocopies of these for the Visual Theories module I'm co-teaching) -- but upon re-reading these texts, I realised that they actually seem a trifle dated now and that I don't quite believe the things they say in the way they say them. I appear to have moved on since last I looked so I will, instead, post my own personal ranty thoughts on this matter. Informed, to be sure, by Michel and Roland, may their souls rest in peace.

There is a common belief that the meaning of a text lies in what is commonly regarded as the source of the text: its author. I do not share this belief. Nor do I entirely believe that the author is, in fact, the source of the text -- or at least not the sole source.

I am defining 'author' here as something different from the rl individual who sits at her desk and types characters into her keyboard. I follow the categorisations of narratologists here (yes! my not-yet-begun book!). The author is also not identical with the narrator of a story (just as the narrator is not necessarily identical with the pov character of a story). I might have to get back to this point but first what I really want to say.

We tend to proceed on the assumption that an author precedes her text. Author begets fic, so to speak. But you could also reverse this and argue that it is in fact the text that precedes the author. You cannot have an author without a text. Even if you click on a fic and the author's name is missing at the top, you will assume that this story *has* an author. The existence of the text does, so to speak, beget the necessity for an author.

Intuitively, my experience chimes in to some extent with my theoretical position on this. I frequently have the sense that something is writing *through me*, that I'm the vehicle for the story. I think this is why people like to talk about their muses, because there is the sense of being spoken by the text, rather than speaking the text (creatively adapting Jacques Lacan here who said something like 'we do not speak language; language speaks us' -- which is also in a way true, because language exists before we are born and we accede to it in childhood - at least I seem to remember that this was Lacan and not some other theory monger).

As for interpretation: The author is the fic's first reader, and its first interpreter. But she is not the only interpreter and not her interpretation is not privileged above anyone else's. It might matter what her intentions are but how do we divine those intentions? Firstly, by reading the fic. I am of the opinion that if it's not in the fic, it's not part of that story's intention. If the author says separately, in chat or in email or to you in person, 'I meant to say this and this...' then that is her opinion. Either her intention manifests itself in the story, or it does not in which case the author's intention has failed. Not necessarily the story: the fic may still be very enjoyable -- even if it does something different from what the author intended. The author may, of course, feel that the fic has failed if it doesn't convey what she has meant it to. I myself am always delighted when readers find things in my fics that I haven't consciously put in there -- and they nearly always do.

ETA: bugger it all, this is not entirely true. Sometimes people read something in a fic of mine that I do not like to be there. *sound of house of cards toppling* But not really. My theoretical point still holds.

We are complex humans. Half the time I can't even articulate what exactly I mean or want in day-to-day parlance. This is partly what When We Are Human was [meant to be! *g*] about: the impossibility of pinning down what a person (in the fic: Karl) truly wants, thinks and intends. And in writing fic that is doubly true. Words and narratives are so multi-layered and resonant.

So I guess what is important to me is the story's meaning and the story's intention, not the author's. And that makes itself known to me through the words in the story, not the words provided by way of explanation by the author when asked.

This is not to say that an author's interpretation cannot be very fascinating. But so can another reader's.

I'll respond to everyone in turn now:

azewewish said:
An author can tell you *intention*, but not interpretation.
Yes, absolutely. Which prompted the above.

mdbfan replied to azewewish:
I'm not sure I agree with this...I've always thought that it's the
author's job to get across the meaning they intend, and if people
consistently misinterpret it in a way the author really doesn't
intend or like, it needs to be rewritten more clearly.
Okay, I see the point but I still don't agree with it. It is not the author's "job" to get across an "intended" "meaning". All of these terms are problematic. What is the author's job? *sighs* I don't know. But I like to think that when I write, that I have no "job". To me, writing is partly about freedom (Jack Sparrow: "not what a ship is made of, but what a ship is"). I guess I think my primary responsibility is to the story but that's not really my "job".

"Meaning" is another difficult one: is meaning a kernel of truth to be extracted from the layers of the fic like a nugget of gold buried within an onion? Or is meaning something that every reader brings to the story, because the reader completes the triangle of author-fic-reader. It is only when a reader reads a story, that the story becomes meaningful. A story just sitting there means nothing; it's got to be read by somebody. (And the author is, as I said, also the story's first reader.) I think there are many meanings in each story, even in a drabble and yes, even in a bad!fic. Because these points have nothing to do with quality -- they apply across the board.

And finally, "intended" meaning. This ties in with my points on intention above. We can only infer intention from the text. If the author says, "But I intended x not y", then we can infer her intentions from her words. But her words do not necessarily explain or relate in any direct way to her story. We can nod and say, "Oh really? You intended x? Well, too bad, I see y." This is irrespective of whether we love y or hate y.

sheldrake said:
Once you publish a story, once it's in the public domain, then your relationship to it changes.
Absolutely. Once it's out there, the fic has to stand on its own two feet. The umbilical has been cut and the fic has grown up and is responsible for itself. (Eeek, mpreg metaphors!)

cherry_glitter said:
How far does this go? I agree that readers bring their own interpretation and perspective to a story, but at some point shouldn't they be able to go to you, the author, and ask you what it means? You did (presumably) have a purpose and intention in writing it in the first place
See my points on intention above. But the 'how far does it go' is interesting. I'm just trying to think of counter-arguments to my position, and I agree that some theorists have gone too far and wanted to do away with the author altogether. Barthes called him (and yes: him -- all those old codgers apparently thought that women never write, hah) 'the inscriptor' and Foucault spoke of an 'author-function', not an author. As an author myself, I do want to hold onto the notion that there is a unified being who creates these stories, who is identifiable by her style and many of whose personal experiences have flowed into her fics. That has no bearing on interpretation, though.

There is no "should" about being able to come to the author and ask what it means. Mostly, readers tend to ask the author what the fic means if the fic itself is confusing or opaque or deliberately mysterious. I have had dozens of conversations with azewewish about the meanings of "Fun&Games" and have often disagreed with her interpretations of her own series but it is true that I do enjoy hearing her view and am always impressed by the way she thinks characters and plot through. That still leaves me free to interpret the story in my own way, though.

I guess as a reader I like to retain my freedom as well. I don't like to bow down to the authority of the author who supposedly knows best. No, in my capacity of reader, *I* know best.

If it were otherwise, what would be the point of writing a story? Authors could just deliver their "intended meanings", e.g. in a plot outline or explanation of concepts, and that would be it. The story is separate and distinct from intentions.

freyafloyd said:
I think this is where there is a bit of a divergence between slash
an published fiction. In a slash fandom, the reader has greater access to the author than they do to a real author. The different level of access gives us a different understanding of the fics.

Now this I found a very interesting point which, as far as I've read, nobody has theorised about. It does make an enormous difference, and embodies the whole pleasure I, at any rate, glean from fanfic, the whole community-aspect of it (I've bored on about this in a previous post on 'the four feet of fandom'). And it is true: when I read fanfic the author, especially if I know her well, looms much, much larger than when I read published fiction. The author looms, I have to say, even larger than when I read published novels by rl friends of mine. Perhaps the very format of the published book creates a distance between reader and author. In fandom, the venue of chatting is shared with the venue of fic posting, and we are constantly talking about each other's fics to each other as well. I will ponder this further.

If a finished piece of writing is the tip of the iceberg of an author's understanding of the character's lives and history, in slash we have access to the author to find out more about the characters. We do not have this with real fiction, so we interpret merely on what we read within the book.
And I'm disagreeing again. *g* I like the 'tip of an iceberg' analogy because it chimes in with how I've written fics. But I have chosen not to put the rest of the iceberg in the fic (and just let the iceberg inform the fic in unsaid ways).

An individual understands themself better than anyone else does, and an author understands their own work better than anyone else does.
No. I certainly am not together enough to understand myself most of the time. I struggle with figuring out my own motivations. Ditto with my work.

Maybe what is at stake here is the process of creation as being different from the process of interpretation. It is true that what I value in fics (another thing I've ranted about elsewhere) is an author being in total control of her story, and I, too, like to be in control of my characters, my plot, my backstory, my words. But once I have finished producing my text, that control ceases. As a reader, I like stories where I have a strong sense of authorial control -- but I get that sense from the story, not from the author.


I think the reader should try and see what the writer was trying to say, rather than get caught up in their own response or the response of their culture.
I disagree. It is true that meanings are not arbitrary or limitless (so I'm less of a pomoist than I once was! heh); they are steered by a story. I can't read a fic about Dom fucking Lij and think, "Oh, Orli's kissing Viggo." But whacko end of [non]-interpretation aside, I think readers can pull out of stories pretty much what they like. And they tend to do that, too. It's what people enjoy, I think. And it's the only way I can explain lurkers who never make contact with authors but just enjoy the stories.

And the response of the culture! We share this culture with the author, after all! In fanfic more than anywhere! An author is a product of her culture as much as a reader is. Culture always and inevitably informs all of our responses. We're not monads.

eyebrowofdoom replied to freyafloyd:
My authorial intention vis a vis interpretation is not a sacrosanct, self-contained and final whole, because I don't consider (social) reality itself to be susceptible to definitive interpretation -- so my
interpretation is conditional by nature and incapable of trumping per se another person's.
Absolutelam (to quote that Lucky Man chappie).

While certain basic facts of the subject matter should not be in dispute and these should direct a reasonable reader toward a certain range of conclusions, I actually want meaning in my fiction to be slippery and conditional in the same way that meaning in actual human relationships is
Yes, as I said above. The fic *guides* meaning but does not circumscribe it.

If what one wants primarily to do is get across a static contention in an unambiguous way, one should be writing an argumentative non-fiction essay, not fiction, because the object of fiction is to give the reader pleasure.
Yes! As I said above: if it's just about the author's intention, we need go no further than plot outlines.

msilverstar said:
I would say that the author is more than just another voice, but not the final authority on all aspects.
The author is more than just another voice because in our culture an author (or "author-function") is *accorded* that authority.

We reveal more than we consciously know about ourselves when we write.
Oh absolutely. As I said above about not knowing my own intentions.


*wipes brow*

God, I planned to spend ten minutes on this, and now it's 1.50 am! *screams* I got carried away, folks. *falls off swivel chair in exhaustion*