Wolfe being clear on 5HoC

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 10 Sep 2006, 01:32 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 18:32:41 -0700
Subject: (urth) Wolfe being clear on 5HoC
In-Reply-To: <000001c6d46f$3da7bfe0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
References: <000001c6d46f$3da7bfe0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
Message-ID: <1f7617370609091832x210a855btc345aabd6e926028 at mail.gmail.com>

Adding onto what Tony says:

I don't believe that the words are "sacred" or anything. A text is
a made thing. But I also quite firmly believe that a text is what it
is, rather than what its writer may have wanted it to be, or indeed
may believe it to be. Indeed, my own experience with texts I have
written have shown me that the writer may be quite unaware of
what a text actually is. The best story I've published to date
concealed a religious message, almost an allegory, of which I
had no inkling when I wrote it but which was so painfully
obvious when a reader pointed it out to me ... well, if someone
else had written it, I wouldn't believe their claims that it was
not intentional. But there you are: the text is what it is.

To that extent, then, while I don't suggest that the writer's
external comments be utterly disregarded in interpreting a
text, those comments are of tertiary value at best. The primary
fact, we interpret, is the text, an independent object sent into
the world by its writer, and the secondary means by which
we interpret it is by observing our encounters with the text
as _readers_. The writer's intentions must yield pride of place
to both the text as a fact and the encounter with the text as
experiential data.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
I've got a piece of braaaaain lodge in me heeead!!!

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