‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

Its about understanding what another human being has to say to you, not about your opinion of what he's saying. And how can you even have an opinion of what he's saying if you don't listen as objectively as you can? What I bring to reading Tolkien's works has little or no value, (imo) in comparison to what Tolkien has to teach me.

Applied to the text written and published by the author, I do not disagree with you. Applied to anything beyond the text, I couldn't disagree with you more. An author has no guarantee that readers will actually like his story. From those that do, he cannot expect more than a tiny minority to delve any further than the text. For the vast majority of readers it is impractical for them, or simply of no interest to them, to do so.

I am not saying that they are right and you are wrong, just as I do not believe that you are right and they are wrong. Each is (within the boundaries that we have discussed earlier) an equally valid response to the author's work. Certainly, I cannot imagine that you are saying that we should all respond to art in the same way or approach it according to a specific set of guidelines.