Question about how we look at text

[sartorias]

I’m beginning with the assumption that before print, when few in Western Europe were literate, and most texts copied laboriously, there was a sense that texts were authoritative, or truth

Comments

[scribblerworks]

I don't think it's an either/or situation. I think it is much more both this and that case.

I do think that a work should be able to stand on its own feet, and not have to lean on anything the author has said extra-textual to it. If it cannot endure on its own, I wouldn't call it a "fully formed" work. And I think there is a level of scholarship that aught to be able to work on material that way - that can find truth in the work that is not reliant upon data outside the work.

But there is no denying that the internet has made it possible to easily make public authorial discussion of material and meaning, in ways that had never been possible outside of personal correspondence or small sharing groups. And it would be foolish to say that we should never look at such things in considering the works of writers. I'm thinking here of Diana Glyer's The Company They Keep, which highlights the value of considering the possibilities of the extra-textual matters.

Heck, I've created some of that extra-textual matter here on LiveJournal myself! (In particular, this post: http://scribblerworks.livejournal.com/6580.html#cutid1 -- it helped me sort out a crucial plot point.)

The problems in this immediacy, though is that if the public discussion changes what the author meant to do, those who were offended by the original discussion and decided to never have anything further to do with the work will probably never know they actually had a postitive effect. It seems to me that many on the internet harbor rather adamant grudges, vowing never to change their opinion after they've been offended. It's the new hazard of the internet age, I guess. That, and the ability of the offended to spread their grudges.

But over all... I think in the end, true storytellers will just adapt. They (we) will learn to use all means to the best advantage of the story. Or else run the risk of losing the audience. And if keeping the audience means making available extra-textual material, so be it.

[sartorias]

I think you are right about adaptation.

[lady_ganesh]

That's more or less my thought as well.