‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

davem, you wrote:

but that is to miss the whole point, & make the story into something it wasn't meant to be

I think the question I would like to have answered (and, I hope I'm not off-base when I say that this is the same issue that has bedeviled your conversations with Saucepan Man on this topic) is just how do you/we know what the story was "meant to be"? If, as you are arguing, the meaning of the text is entirely internal to M-E, then how can we access that and bring it 'out' into our Primary World? Are we in some kind of direct communion with the author? Or are we back to the claim that 'we' all 'just know' what it's 'about'?