The Intersect

[sartorias]

Here's a question, based on my reading somewhere on my flist that someone or other (how's that for pegging sources?) insists that readers today google authors before they buy a book. (I'm not sure that's true, but that might be because everybody does it but me.) If I hear about a book, I google the book, not the author, but maybe that's my age

Comments

[asakiyume]

Lightning in sunny light seems quite supernatural. I hope you do get rain.

To the topic:For me, if I know the author before having read the books, then the books seem part of the overall personality of the author, another facet of a person I like. If I come to the books first, though, I often don't want to know too too much about the author. It's kind of cool to talk to authors, but if I have a deep and personal relationship with the work and the world, I'm not sure I want the author telling me things about what he or she intended. It also makes me more aware of the work as fiction, a created thing, which I don't always want, when I really love a book.

[sartorias]

The storm moved off (of course) but the lightning was very weird.

Usually I don't care if I know something about the author or not (though I admit I've never read anything by the mystery writer who murdered her mother, nor do I intend to), but I will look things up if I liked a book.

However, in this instance it's knowing things beforehand and then seeing truth in fiction that somehow seems to be enhancing the effect of the story. I think. Trying to get my head around it (as much as anyone can think in this punishing heat).

[asakiyume]

I've never had that experience, I guess. I mean, in some of my dad's non-genre stuff, I've seen details of our family life, but transmuted and put into different circumstances, etc.--and that's not what you're talking about, I know. You're talking about the internal truths.

... at an extreme, could what you describe cause a reader who knew the author's life to read the novel as better written than it really was, because precisely of the additional knowledge enhancing the effect?

[sartorias]

That is exactly the question I am asking. Exactly.

[asakiyume]

LOL, I'm working my way through your conversations with others, and now I understand.

And yes, I think it's a risk.