Clarissa's Blog

7 responses to “Weird Obsessions”

1. 

   Pen

   October 2, 2016

   I absolutely hate it when people ascribe the stories authors write to said authors’ lives. “S/he has (a) character(s) who believes X, so s/he must also believe X!” It makes me want to hit somebody. I’m reading through the archives of a particular blog right now (not yours, of course, though once in a while I read through your archives, too) and every so often I find something like that. I just want to find them and shake them and yell “AUTHORIAL INTENT IS A FALLACY!”

   As for Ferrante’s real name, you’re absolutely right. Who cares? So many people write under pseudonyms that nobody’s ever going to unearth every single one. Some authors even gasp write under different names for different genres. And many more write about things they have not themselves experienced. gasp The inconceivable horror! This person who wrote about the zombie apocalypse did not themselves live through one! Whatever shall we do?!

   For some reason it reminds me of a Monty Python sketch. If it weighs less than a duck….

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      October 2, 2016

      There was a time when it was fashionable to try to “psychoanalyze” an author on the basis of his or her works of literature. Thankfully, it was soon abandoned because it was too ridiculous. I remember reading one such analysis where the literary critic diagnosed an author with having had difficulty with passing through his mother’s birth canal on the basis of the author’s use of imagery that involved all kinds of tubes and pipes. I’m so happy nobody does this kind of analysis any more.

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      1. 

         Pen

         October 3, 2016

         ” I’m so happy nobody does this kind of analysis any more.”

         -Unfortunately, enough kids are taught something like this in school that so many people still try. I still cringe whenever I even think of the phrase “why did the author write X?” I remember having arguments with my teachers about it–in elementary school and middle school, I categorically refused to answer such questions, and eventually they stopped asking. In high school I would answer those questions with long rants to the effect that we can’t know why X author wrote Y, since he’s dead or we don’t know him in person. And when I had a poem published in a school magazine, so many people came up to me asking what it meant or why I had written it. I hated it. I still hate it.

         ” I remember reading one such analysis where the literary critic diagnosed an author with having had difficulty with passing through his mother’s birth canal on the basis of the author’s use of imagery that involved all kinds of tubes and pipes.”

         -Because of course the author would remember that. But what if he was born via C-Section? Then it must be because he feels deprived because he didn’t have that traditional birth experience. Or maybe he has problems performing! Or a UTI! Or maybe he was just thinking about sex the entire time he wrote! I’m also glad they’ve stopped doing that, but your example was so hilarious it makes me want to find other comic examples and print them out or something. Maybe I’ll show them to those teachers who tried to make me answer those authorial intent questions.

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2. 

   cliff arroyo

   October 3, 2016

   “And she didn’t even grow up in the same family as her character!” As if she were supposed to”

   It’s this type of stupid thinking that leads to stupid stuff like “cultural appropriation”, which taken to its extreme disqualifies all art but autobiography….

   “Anita Raja as opposed to Bubita Baja or Kubita Saja?”

   I get your point here and find it kind of amusing that some people will think Ms Raja has an Indian background (regardless of whether she’s the author or not).

   But j when used in Italian (which is rarely) is like the German j (english y) and I assume it’s a phonetic respelling of something like Reier.

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      October 3, 2016

      Even autobiography can be suspect. If you write about people you meet, are you appropriating their experiences? No, let’s only write about sitting at home alone and staring at the wall.

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      1. 

         Shakti

         October 3, 2016

         Every autobiography is a work of creative [non]fiction.

         Branding is writing as typecasting. It is the sine qua non and the raison d’être to sell mediocre books by the same types of people telling the same types of stories. People sometimes buy those because they like the messenger telling the same stories they consume over and over again. It is also an excuse to treat good writing by anonymous or non branded authors as some kind of trick or exception or the end of a marketing teaser campaign. So many cannot conceive of a book as being separate from an author’s persona that it baffles them when they cannot find one to pick apart.

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3. 

   susan gilbert

   October 3, 2016

   Autobiography is definitely creative, it has to be or most of the published ones would be pretty short and unbelievably tedious – “I got up on the morning of my wedding and ate toast and oatmeal…”. It’s not that all authors deliberately lie about themselves and their lives, but incidents have to be put into context and conversations re-created. I do it myself when writing in memoir mode. If creative non-fiction is created considerately, does it matter? Of course not, unless there’s criminal intent and even then, if nobody’s truly harmed, what the hell!

   As for analysing authors on the basis of their literature, so bloody stupid – the word is FICTION! It means exactly what it says on the tin. Only those with no imagination don’t understand storytelling, surely? Did the Brothers Grimm have their breakfast (and grandmother) devoured by bears and/or wolves? I somehow doubt it.

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