Why Roland Barthes Is a Writer’s Best Friend

(early post — chag sameach, happy Passover!)

Literary theorist and critic Roland Barthes once wrote that the author is dead.

As authors, writers and other artists might object to this: first, and most obviously, I am not dead. Unless we are talking, like, M. Night Shyamalan stuff.

Of course, Barthes doesn’t mean we’re literally dead. Barthes is writing about how the reader’s knowledge of the author should inform the reader’s understanding of the author’s work. Or, rather, how it shouldn’t: once completed, a written work is separate from its author, rather like how a child is a different person from his or her parents. Yes, we can see how one is responsible for creating the other, and, if we like, we can look at how qualities of the creator led to certain qualities in the creation.

But if that’s all we do, then we’re missing out on the wonderful, layered, multi-faceted human being the child is.

Just as we don’t usually evaluate people we meet by interpreting everything they do or say as a manifestation of their parents’ genes or parenting skills, Barthes argues that it’s not most fruitful to evaluate a book or other piece of writing by interpreting everything it contains in terms of the author’s intentions and experience.  To do so limits what the text can be rather than taking full advantage of ability of a work of art to have many interacting meanings — it “closes” the writing to further exploration. Sure, J. K. Rowling might say Dumbledore is gay, but if it’s not there in the books, it makes the series greater, not lesser, to treat her version as no more or less valid than that of a fan who believes Dumbledore is time-travelling future Ron.

This might feel threatening to some authors. But the world I made up is mine! we might protest. Of course I get to say what’s really real about it and what’s just an off-the-wall fan theory! The OTP is what I wrote! The history of the world is exactly what my characters think it is! My protagonist has brown, not green eyes, damnit!

First, Barthes isn’t saying that nothing the author says matters. What the author says in the story does matter. Some statements about the world of the story will be more strongly supported by the text itself than others, and we can evaluate them this way.

But even if that’s not good enough, looking past this worry about “controlling” the world of a story after a particular text is written, Barthes is actually an author’s best friend.

Specifically, he’s a revising author’s best friend.

When I attended a Highlights Whole Novel Workshop in 2009, one of the most valuable things we did was set up critique sessions in which the writer whose work was being discussed was not allowed to talk for the first hour of the session. That was so useful that to this day, when I workshop plays or hear critiques of stories, I try my very best to put myself in a similar situation.

Similarly, in the playwriting classes I took during my undergraduate degree, one of our major classroom rules was: nobody reads his or her own work aloud. Someone else from the class has to read. Whenever I can, I stick with this one, too.

Why? Well, both these “rules,” though they may seem strict, are extraordinarily helpful. First, it’s easy to forget someone’s in the room when they don’t talk during a long, involved conversation. After a few minutes of author-gag-order, critique partners start to say things and speculate in a way I find plain doesn’t happen when the author is part of the discussion.

But more important, these rules prevent me from doing the worst thing a writer can do to a reader’s reaction: taking it over.

When I’m sitting there listening to other people discuss my work, I really want to butt in all the time: “Actually, I wrote on page 5 why that thing you’re wondering about happened.” “Oh, you’ll just have to wait and see about that action that seems strange *wink*” “Yeah, but the way I see it, he isn’t angry, he’s actually just hurt.” And the critiquers want me to butt in. Often, they feel that the way they can be most helpful is to know my intentions and then tell me if the work measured up.

The problem is, as soon as I tell them my intentions, they’re not evaluating my work based on their initial reactions anymore. They’re doing their best to be helpful: they’re looking for the things I told them I wanted them to find and letting me know how easy it was to uncover them.

Likewise, when I read my own work aloud, my tone of voice tells the reader exactly what I mean by a particular phrase and how I think it should be spoken. I will gloss over natural-to-me, awkward-to-everyone-else phrasing because I know what it’s supposed to mean. I’ll pause at the right places. I’ll sound sad and happy at the right places. I’ll nail the timing and do the right voices for each character.

But I’m not writing for people who are sitting in the same room as me, able to ask me questions. I’m writing for people for whom I may as well be one of those dead authors.

I’m not peering over an agent’s shoulder as she reads my submission. I’m not in the rehearsal room when the director picks up my script and starts the readthrough. And if I get published, I certainly won’t stand beside each reader telling him or her to hang on, that weird boring part is actually really important for the cool exciting part that comes later.

I need to know how people react to my writing when I’m not part of the conversation. Because most of the time, I won’t be, and that’s OK, because that’s how a text becomes something more than its author.

It’s like Roland Barthes suggests: my intentions are all very well, but the only person who should care about them — who has access to them — is me. If I hand them to my critique partners, I’m doing both of us a disservice. I’m not serving them because I’m smothering their reaction, and I’m not serving me because I’m not getting feedback that will help me make my manuscript speak for itself.

So when I’m revising, yes, the author is — has to be — dead. Long live the words!