Noblesse Oblige We have in Plenty, but Precious Little Droit du Seigneur

[steepholm]

Did I mention that I've been dipping my toe into the world of authors and their pesky post-facto thoughts about books?

Comments

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

I also think a strong argument can be made that literally anything an author says outside the actual text counts as more information outside the book.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In a rigidly pedantic sense, yes. But in practice there's a difference.

Saying "Dumbledore is gay" in response to a specific question about his non-standard-heterosexual reaction to a romantic situation would be the one. Just up and saying "Dumbledore is gay" without any textual evidence one way or another was the other.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean it in a rigidly pedantic way. I guess I don't see the distinction quite as clearly.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Do you mean that you actually don't see a distinction, or that you don't think the distinction is significant?

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Right now I honestly don't understand what the distinction is. I'm not arguing that there isn't one, but I don't currently comprehend what it is.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The situation in which she said it was somewhere in between, I think. It was in response to a question about whether Dumbledore ever found "true love". Perhaps, as far as she was concerned, the evidence was there in the text, for those with eyes to see.

In this particular case it's not just about whether (or how far) she went beyond textual evidence, but also about what her audience was prepared to hear. For example, there's no evidence in the book that Dumbledore is straight, but had she answered that he just never found the right girl it's highly unlikely that her remark would have been subject to the same kind of interrogation.