AlanCrowe comments on A Kick in the Rationals: What hurts you in your LessWrong Parts? - Less Wrong
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Comments (194)
Thank you for this.
It's funny you should mention Death of the Author. I have another friend whose academic background is in literature, and he rants to the point of blind fury about how ridiculous a notion it is. I showed him the above link to get his opinion, and his most pointed comment was how the author's emphasis on academia, student debt and being forced to work menial academic positions was not a shining indictment of Roland Barthes.
He disagrees with "Death of the Author"? You've whetted my curiosity - I've always thought that it was a fairly reasonable position.
Also, I don't know what you mean by "indictment of Roland Barthes"
Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle provides a concrete example, useful for grounding a discussion of the "Death of the Author". Stealing a paragraph from Wikipedia
Author's really do intend specific interpretations, and can notice, with disappointment, when readers impose a different interpretation by weight of numbers.
I have a hard time sympathizing with Upton Sinclair's complaint about the specifics of how his resounding success was implemented. He thought unregulated capitalism was bad, and explained why; people agreed, and tore down the "unregulated" part.
Yep. Any writer of fiction needs to understand the concept of "death of the author", even if they don't call it that - the text as all the reader has to go on.