Trust the tale, not the teller

[thuviaptarth]

Thank you to everyone who responded to this.

I really do think this is the oddest meme. I don't even know how to express what strikes me as so odd about it. The phrasing seems to depend on assumptions about how fiction writers relate to writing, and fiction readers relate to reading, that ... are just so far from the way I have always thought of these things that I don't even know how to say what's off about them. Maybe also about how people present themselves in particular circumstances versus what they really think or feel, too.

Also, either some of you are much better at stripping out what you know of people than I am, or else I haven't made clear things about myself that I think are perfectly obvious. I haven't been able to respond to posts by people I know even a little because I do know them even a little, and unless I remember very clearly my impression of them before talking to them, it's ... no, I can't make it go away.

Comments

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I really do think this is the oddest meme. I don't even know how to express what strikes me as so odd about it. The phrasing seems to depend on assumptions about how fiction writers relate to writing, and fiction readers relate to reading, that ... are just so far from the way I have always thought of these things that I don't even know how to say what's off about them.

That's what I said. It suggests the use of certain very primitive hermeneutic strategies which, frankly, I'd be offended to hear could be effectively applied to me and my work!

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not offended, and there are some aspects of the hermeneutics which would work; I mean, I would not be surprised if someone determined I was a feminist based on some of the writing, and I am afraid they could tell I wasn't Asian based on the animanga writing -- I've tried to do as much research and pay as much attention to the cultural details I get from the source as I can, given the amount of time I've got and the amount of energy I've got to spare, but I am afraid my foreignness may be all too evident.

But the meme has a sense of the authorial persona as presented in the writing as being equivalent to the social persona presented in, say, real-life conversation, and ... I don't actually believe in that.

ranalore said elsewhere that when she was a kid she thought the writers of her favorite books would be her best friends, and maybe that's it; because that never once occurred to me. I was focused on the characters being my imaginary best friends, and I was very conscious of the authors themselves being strangers.