There is an Irish saying that means, roughly, "What one person writes, another can never truly understand. Others can only interpret."
I stumbled across this the other day as I did some research for some St. Patrick's Day writing, and it really made me pause. As an avid reader, and an almost equally avid reviewer, I spend hours of my life each week trying to understand what others have written. Trying to see what is on the page, and why and how it is there.
In hindsight, I believe this is why I find author interviews and author biographies as fascinating as I do. After listening to an interview with Mark Helprin included at the end of the audio version of Freddy and Fredericka, I suddenly realized that the Mark Helprin I had concocted in my head was actually nothing like the Mark Helprin of real life. And knowing that changed my understanding of his writing, somehow. His claims that he does not, in fact, write--or even like!--magical realism made me pause, as I have always considered both Freddy and Fredericka and Winter's Tale to be books of magical realism at its very finest.
And upon reading The Man Who Invented Christmas, a history of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I found that my annual re-read of the classic Christmas story was changed, not necessarily for better or for worse, but changed nonetheless.
Part of me loves this change, feeling as though I am coming closer and closer to understanding what the book was intended to be, rather than what I have made it for myself. But the other part of me, perhaps a larger part, believes that I am losing something in this act of understanding, as I have lost the ability to define for myself what I want to take away from my latest read.
At the end of the day, I think the old proverb may be on to something; do we, as readers, really ever know what the author has written, or can we only know our interpretation of it?
I wonder what you all think: Is it important to know the author, or the history of a book, in order to come closer to understanding the books true meaning, or does it not matter--should the book stand on its own, open to the individual interpretation of its readers?
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I do think knowing more about the author and the background of a book can lead to a better understanding of a book.
ReplyDeleteI agree! But sometimes I like what I make up about a book/author more than what I learn about it.
DeleteI want to say that the book should stand on it's own, but I love reading an author's thoughts about a story. I don't go out of my way to find that but I loved that King includes a little explanation for each of his short stories in Everything's Eventual. and the author's explanation was my favorite part of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father She Ate Me.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. I wish I could have it both ways. I haven't read most of King's explanations of his works, although I did listen to an interview of him at the end of the audio version of 11/22/63 and it was fascinating to hear how he came up with the whole thing.
DeleteThis is a fabulous question. I'm would agree with Red about Stephen King. He regularly he incorporates a lot of the reasons why he has written a novel, his inspirations, etc. In fact, those Afterwords are sometimes equally satisfying as the story itself, as she mentioned. I always love to know the foundation of what made the author come up with the plot, etc., and I sometimes am even more interested to visit with the book again.
ReplyDeleteGood point about wanting to revisit a book - I've definitely done that before, and the added knowledge for the second read definitely changes the experience of reading it.
DeleteThis is a long-standing literary criticism battle. Some literary critics ("New Criticism") say that the book should stand on its own - and in fact, the less you know about the author the better. Others say that knowing about the life of the author helps to unravel the meaning of the book. I think it's interesting to look at the text both ways - first without knowing about the author and then with that information - and see how your reactions change. The discussion is an interesting one.
ReplyDeleteJulie, I like your idea of reading a text both ways. The examples that stand out to me in my own reading are definitely ones where I have done this, even unintentionally. And thanks for the added info on New Criticism, too!
DeleteJohn Green has an author's note at the beginning of his new book: "Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species."
ReplyDeleteWhich is kinda related, but also not. I tend to let a book stand on it's own...unless it's so baffling that I need some sort of insight as to where the author might have possibly been coming from.
Love that author's note! It almost drives to the whole question of the "value" of non-fiction vs. fiction, no?
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