Author, Reader, or Text? (aka Canonicity Slapdown 2005)

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

As SPM has implied, a book itself is only a sort of potential energy; unread, gathering dust on a shelf, it is meaningless to anyone except the one who wrote it. When another mind engages it, the possibilities that the two may create together are boundless. But it takes both author and reader together to make it happen.

I don't think anyone would argue that writer & reader are 'co-creator's' of the Secondary world. Tolkien says as much in the Fairy Stories essay, where he states that when a story refers to a tree, river or hill the reader will inevitably supply the image for himself, which will be an amalgam of all the trees, rivers or hills he/she has ever known, but principally of the first of those things the reader experienced, which, to them will mean Tree, River or Hill.

But the point is that the reader is supplying the images of those things, not adding those things to the story off their own bat. And if the story refers to a tree, the reader is not free to imagine a car. The imagery may be unique to each reader, but the story is not. The story(teller) is in control of the events of the tale, the reader only what it 'looks' like - & even then he is only 'free' to a very limited extent. Even with a tree - if the story refers to a gigantic tree the reader is not free to imagine a bonsai.

Ok, the reader is free to imagine a bonsai tree, but then the events of the story will not make sense - particularly if the next event described is that the hero climbs the tree. So, if the author says the hero came to a gigantic tree what constitutes 'gigantic' will be down to the reader - 50 ft? 100? 200? 1000? On the other hand, if the author says the hero came to a 'gigantic tree, 300 feet tall at the least.' the reader must imagine exactly that.

In other words, the more precise the storyteller is in his description the less freedom the reader has in his/her contribution to the experience.

So much for the imagery. The same must also apply to the value system & morality of the story. If the writer says merely 'Fred was a good man.' the reader is free to apply his/her own concept of 'goodness' to Fred. If, however, the writer says 'Fred was a good man because he was kind to animals' the reader must accept (for the purposes of the story) that being kind to animals is 'good' behaviour within the world of the story. Similarly, if the writer says 'Fred was a good man because he hated Elves' & the story shows Elves to be bad people, then the reader, if he/she is to fully enter into the world of the story, must accept that a) Elves are bad & b) that Fred is a good man because he hates them. To bring in 'Tolkienesque' baggage about Elves & choose to believe that Elves in this secondary world must be good because they're good in Middle earth means that the reader will not be able to enter into the world of the story, because the events of the story will become increasingly 'nonsensical'.

So, obviously, there is a degree of reader input into the story, co-creation does happen, but the writer is in charge, & determines the degree of input the reader has.