As a writer, I think that a work has to stand on its own. If you ex-post-facto it up with "Dumbledore is gay," then what you're basically admitting is that you think it's important to convey this, but you didn't bother doing a good enough job of writing to convey it in the actual books, so you're doing a patch job now. Which is fair enough, I guess, insofar that as much I enjoyed the HP books, I've always thought the world-building and characterization were pretty crappy.
As a critic, I fundamentally don't much care what the author thinks zir text means, for a couple reasons. One is that interpretation is a different activity than writing; there's no reason to suppose that someone good at the latter is good at the former. Another is that what the writer thinks something means does not change what the words on the page say, and if a critic can support zir argument using the words on the page, no amount of nuh-uh-ing from the author makes that evidence go away. Conversely, a writer can insist and insist that a meaning is there, but if nobody actually can pick it up from the words on the page, well, authorial intent plus $2.75 will get you on the subway.
But I think there's a difference between authors elaborating on their fictional worlds and authors trying to assert control over critical interpretation. Dumbledore is gay? Sure, why not. They're her characters. That's just world-building. It's her job. If she says "Dumbledore is gay and you can see that in the first book," however, I'm going to have to assume that she's hallucinating new text in there.
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Date: 2016-03-12 07:50 pm (UTC)As a writer, I think that a work has to stand on its own. If you ex-post-facto it up with "Dumbledore is gay," then what you're basically admitting is that you think it's important to convey this, but you didn't bother doing a good enough job of writing to convey it in the actual books, so you're doing a patch job now. Which is fair enough, I guess, insofar that as much I enjoyed the HP books, I've always thought the world-building and characterization were pretty crappy.
As a critic, I fundamentally don't much care what the author thinks zir text means, for a couple reasons. One is that interpretation is a different activity than writing; there's no reason to suppose that someone good at the latter is good at the former. Another is that what the writer thinks something means does not change what the words on the page say, and if a critic can support zir argument using the words on the page, no amount of nuh-uh-ing from the author makes that evidence go away. Conversely, a writer can insist and insist that a meaning is there, but if nobody actually can pick it up from the words on the page, well, authorial intent plus $2.75 will get you on the subway.
But I think there's a difference between authors elaborating on their fictional worlds and authors trying to assert control over critical interpretation. Dumbledore is gay? Sure, why not. They're her characters. That's just world-building. It's her job. If she says "Dumbledore is gay and you can see that in the first book," however, I'm going to have to assume that she's hallucinating new text in there.