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Monday, December 19, 2005
Reader-Response and the Editorial Experience; or, To Them? No. To Me.
[X-posted from Acephalous.]
Are editors supposed to interpret the works they edit? The manuscript I said I’d be reading exceeds the high expectations I had for it . . . but I keep feeling myself interpreting what I read instead of editing it. Focusing on ideas instead of the rare infelicitous sentence puts me in a strange position vis-a-vis authorial intent. I suspect I can help shape the communication of intent . . . but that means I have privileged access to authorial intent when all I really have is privileged access to the author. I am an author of a reader or a reader of an author. Can’t tell which. All of which brings to mind Octavia Butler’s running commentary on the meaning of her short stories in Bloodchild.
In the introduction she complains that
Before now, other people have done all the print interpretations of my work: "Butler seems to be saying . . . " "Obviously, Butler believes . . . " "Butler makes it clear that she feels . . . "
Actually, I feel that what people bring to my work is at least as important to them as what I put into it. But I’m still glad to be able to talk a little about what I do put into my work, and what it means to me. (x)
Her "to them" trips me up. She acts imperially here without seeming to by declaring that what other people think "important to them" pales in comparison to what "[she does] put into [her] work." So when I read her commentaries I didn’t find myself disputing the text but Butler’s authorial fiat of "what [she puts] into it." All of which points to my strange relation to the manuscript I’m reading: I am a reader who thinks certain things about the novel important to me but have the potential to be authorial in the sense that I can influence its author to put into the novel what is important to me. Where do I stand?
I don’t know . . . but from a theoretical perspective this editorial experience has been as exhilirating as reading the novel itself has been.
Comments
The ethics of workshopping come easily to me (as ethics go), and I’ve been told I’m good at it. The workshopper needs to do two things. Primarily, serve as an articulate and honest guinea pig. Secondarily, explain to the author what it seemed their intentions might have been and try to spark ideas for improving the delivery of those intentions (or avoiding their implication if, as often happens, the workshopper’s guess was wrong). Workshopping assumes more than one workshopper (to provide a bit of balance) and no assertion of power (the author needs to do what they want; the workshoppers’ suggestions are at best suggestive, not dictatorial) or, ideally, even of personal taste. Workshopping and (artsy) editing can’t do their jobs unless it’s understood that the author comes first, if only because the end result won’t exist unless the author believes that. Butler is only “imperial” about her own reactions, not anyone else’s, and that seems not just her right but a prerequisite for her sanity and productivity.
Aside from exercising certain analytical and rhetorical skills, criticism feels like a completely different endeavor to me. Workshopping and editing communicates with an author; criticism creates an artifact which happens to refer to other artifacts. Thinking of the author reading my essay would be (depending on the author) almost as inhibitory as thinking about your mom and dad (or a particularly vindictive reviewer) reading your novel. The couple of times that my criticism actually influenced the writer—in particular, once when the writer revised a book to work around something I’d pointed out—that felt really, really creepy. Like a taboo had been broken.
I’m confused—you say: ‘She acts imperially here without seeming to by declaring that what other people think “important to them” pales in comparison to what “[she does] put into [her] work.”’ But I don’t see her “declaring” anything about that comparison—she first says that from the reader’s POV, what they bring to the work is “at least” as important as what she “puts into” it, which seems reasonable and fair. She doesn’t talk directly about her POV in this snippet except to assert (trivially) that what she puts into her work means something to her. In my reading she seemed very careful to put the reader’s response on a nearly incomparable level with her own, so I’m not sure what I’m missing, unless the problem is that she doesn’t think the reader’s interpretations are as important to her as her own—but I don’t even see her making a strong claim to that effect.
But Ray is right, of course: you can’t write without a certain suspension of belief in the death of the author. A writer, particularly of fiction, will have a categorically different response to her work from that of any other reader—usually a more limited one. Butler’s “authorial fiat” is pretty weak, I think, but it sounds like she’s offering it up for non-paling-comparison’s sake to readers who have more opportunity to interpret her work, without the blinkers of the “authorial fiat” that many writers need to get the job done.
Just a nit, withheld (and what a great alias in this context!): While in the actual process of writing, I think the “self” of the writer comes awfully close to what Barthes meant by “the death of the author.” When things are going well, we say we “lost ourselves in the work,” we were “completely absorbed”.... What’s required, I think, isn’t so much an assertion of self as a loss of self-consciousness.
Ray, I’ve never workshopped fiction, so I appreciate your input in this. The fear of violating some compact that I, as a life-long reader, have with the authors whose work I read with a critical eye is what drove me to write this post. It’s simply a different relation to literature than I’ve ever experienced before . . . almost like speaking to someone you’ve known your whole life in a language both of you know but have never communicated in before.
withheld, I’m not criticizing Butler here, only pointing to the unusual manner in which she tries to assert authority over her works in this collection. To follow each story with an afterword interpreting it for the reader seems to me a way to control how the reader will respond to the story. Their very presence almost demands the reader consider them part of the story. The way the book’s set up reinforces this impression:
I’m getting “restricted pages” for all the other title pages, but there’s another title page immediately after the afterword for the next story, “The Evening and the Morning and the Night.” By “imperial” I only meant to point to a gesture which seems innocent but, to my mind, is an attempt to reassert authority over her stories by emphasizing the divide between what the reader brings to and what she put into them.
Scott: I didn’t think you were criticising her; I thought I was missing something. As it turns out, I missed the full scenario with the stories and commentary; it’s clearer now, and I see your point. I’m still not sure what to think about her position (I’m not familiar with her work). On the one hand I want to say that it’s easy to take anything an author says with a grain of salt—even when they shout as loud as they can, there’s a limit to their power to shape reactions, and so I can often view the attempts with indulgence. (Unless they show up everywhere trying to argue unconvincingly that people are misinterpreting their work...) On the other hand, I can also see how she seems to be playing defense against her readers, and it’s strange. But my stronger instinct is the charitable one.
Ray: regarding the alias, yes, this is beginning to seem eerily meta-. I haven’t [cringe] read Barthes’ essay actually; but I’ve never seen any human being engaging in any intellectual activity with the unified and directed sense of self that corresponds to the strongest notion we have of “authority,” if that makes any sense, and I entirely grant your point about writing and the loss of self-consciousness. But at least in writing fiction one often needs to make decisions about plot, or character, by “authorial fiat,” and the strongest sense of alienation I have had in writing derives from the idea that I really can bring into being, or remove, elements of the narrative—they are there because I am here. It’s discomfiting. Perhaps because I’m not a genius I can’t do all that work in “total absorption;” some intellectual process engages from time to time to make plot decisions, at which points I can make I-statements: “I could give this character a truck so he can get through the wilderness in scene B, and cut the convertible-on-highway passage in scene A because it was lame and gratuitous anyway.” At those times it seems disingenuous not to take credit, so to speak. A dead author can’t be wrong, but I can.
Ray: “While in the actual process of writing, I think the “self” of the writer comes awfully close to what Barthes meant by “the death of the author.” When things are going well, we say we “lost ourselves in the work,” we were “completely absorbed”...”
Is this really such a general principle? I remember that James Branch Cabell claimed that all authors drank alcohol (or used other drugs) in order to help themselves to write, because after he did and all the authors of his time that he knew did.
I am a reader who thinks certain things about the novel important to me but have the potential to be authorial in the sense that I can influence its author to put into the novel what is important to me. Where do I stand?
I don’t think the theory you are attempting to apply here applies to unfinished works. (Which is another way of trying to say what I think Ray Davies has already said, that one must take account of questions of praxis.) The simplest way to approach this is: until the editing is “finished” the work doesn’t really exist as a theoretical subject, but is instead just a bunch of words.
The author has final responsibility to say when the work is no longer in progress, i.e. Is Finished. (In the limit case of found texts that’s actually the only thing the author does.) Multiple possible strategies exist for arriving at the decision that a work is finished, many of which include partial or total abdication of responsibility to a person playing a role called “the editor”. Hence much historical confusion.
According to the phrases Scott quotes, Butler is explicitly responding not to criticism or interpretation of her work but to statements or guesses about herself. That’s a common lapse of critical decorum—and, as a matter of fact, one of the things that Barthes was reacting against.
I confess I’ve done it too, as a lazy shorthand, but it distracts from responsible reading, and can easily slide into gossipy fantasy, or libel.
And it presumably irritated her as much as it irritates most writers.
withheld, by loss of self-consciousness, I didn’t necessarily mean off-the-leash babbling or derangement of the senses or alcoholism (although all those methods have been used by authors to escape self-consciousness). I was actually thinking more along the lines of the “I” in that intellectual process you describe: the “I” who’s absorbed by the problem of making this damn thing work; the impersonal “I”—“I think, therefore there is thinking.”
Scrib, was that in “Lola?”
Sorry I misspelled your name, Ray. I bet that happens to you all the time. (All day. And all of the night.)
not criticizing Butler here, only pointing to the unusual manner in which she tries to assert authority over her works in this collection.
Why couldn’t she just be understood to be creating a new work? Then we could discuss a very different set of problems. Instead of theoretical questions of authority and interpretation, we could be asking questons of praxis like, “why has Octavia Butler composed a new work which is so similar to a previous work?”
When I help prepare someone else’s manuscript I feel that I face a two-fold task:
First Order) Help the author say what they want to say the way they want to say it - to the extent that this is apparent from the text itself and any contact you’ve had with the author. That’s not necessarily easy.
Second Order) This may be controversial to some (especially in the arts perhaps), but I insist on this for anything I’m asked to help out with, and it seems only appropriate: If desired or necessary, initiate a potential discussion with the author by challenging the authorial intention and accomplishment in any way you care to - of course giving consideration to the nature of your relationship with the author.
Both steps involve becoming a sort of co-author, acknowledged or not. Of course, in this sense, there are many co-authors to any book, since much of the “stuff” in any book doesn’t come from nowhere and no one or any singular person.
On a related note, I hope no one minds my mentioning - If you want to read a great political novel, pick up Andre Vltchek’s Point of No Return, just out, a book I helped prepare (don’t like the word edit really) and am co-publishing. http://www.mainstaypress.org/
Contrast this with the situation in traditional cultures where story-telling is oral and the (sacred and important) stories are handed down from one generation to the next. Where’s the author? In any given instance it is easy enough to identify the person telling the tale. Each story-teller has their own style, their own rhythms, embellishments, and riffs. And a given story is going to differ from one telling to another; the overall arc and major plot points will be the same, but details will vary. But none of this amounts to making the story-teller the author in the current sense.
Further, because the story-telling is a public occasion in the direct presence an audience, the teller can be influenced by audience reaction. There’s no need to imagine an audience, even subliminally. The audience is right there, gasping and groaning, laughing, fidgeting, and so forth. And when it’s all over, the story-teller becomes one of the group, living among them like anyone else.
Once stories become written down things change. There are few direct encounters between authors and their audience, and none while the text is in process. Editors live in the gap that opened up between author and audience when writing was adopted as the delivery vehicle. I don’t write fiction, but my contract for Beethoven’s Anvil gave me final say on the text. My editor and copy-editor asked questions and made suggestions and I responded as I felt appropriate. I can’t imagine things working any other way for fiction.
Interpretation is interpretation. And audiences and critics will think what they will regardless of what authors say. It’s not clear to me that there are any privileged interpretations other than the approbation accorded to some interpretation by a readership.
(Following up this morning to see if there were any further comments, my attempt at jocularity from yesterday looks ungracious to me. Really Ray, I’m sorry about the blunder, and I always particularly enjoy your comments whenever I lurk here, precisely because of the practical approach you generally take.)
There’s a story by Borges whose title I can’t remember that involves him visiting an aged, obscure poet whose work the narrator does not respect, but whom for personal reasons he is obliged to visit. During the visit, the poet insists upon discussing his painfully pedestrian work, which at first seems like it will make for an awkward interview, but to Borges’ surprise he provides such an astonishingly erudite gloss, with every lame trope or faulty cadence interpreted as a classical allusion, that Borges leaves rather shaken, in doubt of his own critical acumen.
Of course the gag is not just that the text turns out to be able to support a surprisingly profound reading, but that this reading is also unquestionably the authorial intent.
After recalling this story, I’m not sure what further contribution I have to make except to say I’m very interested in the way intuitions differ on these issues between someone who has workshop experience, and someone who doesn’t, especially when each party is well-grounded, as here.
I apologize if you took my silence as hurt feelings, scriblerus. Mistakes about my name are so common that I really don’t take much notice of them. And I don’t at all think that you came across as ungracious.