>>> Item number 25174 from WRITERS LOG9402A --- (126 records) ---- <<< Date: Wed, 2 Feb 1994 01:30:03 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: TECH: Does the Reader know the Writer? (was: anne frank) [lots of new critters in the pond (HI!), but I still want to kick this around... forgive me for not quoting everyone, but I thought I'd just summarize and go bravely where I hadn't rambled before...] Does the Reader know the Writer? I think that's sort of the topic we're wandering around. Okay, let me reiterate what I think was the original question - how important is knowledge of the writer's situation to judging the work? (e.g. does the fact that the anne frank of bosnia is writing in bosnia, and is 13 or something, alter the value of the work?) randy and stuart have gone wandering a bit, bringing up the questions of shared background, internal meanings vs external words, and so forth. Tsirbas Christos also added some interesting comments on the notion of categorizing writers by their nationality (or other group membership - I'd never really thought about it, but that "area authors" corner in some bookstores really is a rather nasty ghetto to be stuck in, isn't it?) [Hi, Tsirbas! thanks for joining in...] good stuff, one and all... Let me drop a few more pebbles in the rather muddy waters we're treading about the writer, the words, and the reader. Interesting - especially if I stop and think about something like Shakespeare's work, or Gawain and the Green Knight, where I need commentary just to have a chance of figuring out some of the social and historic references. Take a gander at the original 1000 nights and a night, without reading the footnotes? very difficult. I suppose the negative case of Japanese writings where you don't even understand the language doesn't clarify much... Consider, though, reading something like the original Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson (not the kid's versions - the old monsters). Stylistic barbarisms, with an overlay of socially accepted trash (the White Man's Burden, don't you know!). Or take Tarzan, Lord Greystoke - in the original, with the whole wonderful mixture of "British supremacy" with "the natural man." It's enough to make almost any modern reader feel uncomfortable... Heck, pull the author and cover off one of the "golden age" space operas (E.E. Smith) and try to convince a modern reader to read it. It does seem as though the effect (and affect) of a piece of writing in part depends on how similar the background is. At the same time, I think the detailed knowledge of the author's personal history, while sometimes adding some depth or understanding to a piece, really should not be required to understand and enjoy the piece. Let me switch fields for a sec - Picasso's Guernica (sp?). Disturbing, almost tortured piece of art. I didn't care for it, then someone told me there was a war there... and suddenly the piece started making sense. Now, that little piece of information helped me connect the pattern of thoughts and make a whole out of it. An interesting question for some kind of theoretician might be what information needs to be added to "set the stage" for understanding a writer's work. Actually, it may not be so theoretical - when you bring a book (or short story, etc.) from America to Japan, for example, there are some severe limits on the "common background" you can expect. It seems as if there is a kind of continuum here, from the writer and reader having largely common background and knowledge (which allows them to communicate with the least words and should tend to limit misunderstandings) to cases where writer and reader share very little. It might be interesting to compare different readers - could we say that the writer who manages to convey roughly the same message to a statistically larger percentage of the readers is more "effective"? What then becomes of a Bach (or maybe a James Joyce?) whose messages are so bloody complex that most readers don't follow it even when it is simplified and laid out in great detail? (I was thinking of Johann Sebastian, incidentally - the musician). What about a Marshall McLuhan? I have one of his early books - Mass Communication Theory? something like that. and found it absolutely inspiring, although I could only read about one paragraph a day! DENSE! Then he became popular, and started doing 15 minute books with practically no content - comic books for adults? To me, his later work is eminently discardable, even though it reached a much larger audience. Hum - complex questions, which probably have complex answers. BTW - I've seen a write up of someone who took several pieces by well-known authors, polished the names off, then tried submitting them under an unknown name. Rather amusing collection of rejections, editorial slams, and so forth... Would it make any sense to say that while the names, situation, and so forth are likely to have a high level of influence in our reading of "current" material, these factors are likely to change over time, resulting in rather different evaluation of the writing? E.g., while a piece from the 60's calling for popular support of the Vietnam war might have been a winner at the time, dragging it out now is likely to be a problem. you know, there is something in here that reminds me of the rather well-known comedy bit, where the young man is excited over the voice on the phone... and then we learn that this exciting voice belongs to a well-worn, rather overstuffed mother of whiny little brats... does it really matter what the writer is like, or where, or when? if the words ring, the images live, I can't see it being important whether Hemingway was homosexual, impotent, or even a lush. I think I agree with Randy - once the writer "lets go" of the words, the whole business turns into one between the reader(s) and those words. Admittedly, the writer should do the best they can to form and mold those words for the audience they expect - but if the readers find pornographic imagery underlying it that the writer never thought of, that is just as accurate as the writer's vision... (further ramblings as soon as I find the other file I started on the same topic. sometimes the mental filer misfires. :-) tink