Death of the Author was an essay by a French literary critic, Roland Barthes, in 1967. In it, Roland argues against the idea that to really understand a work, you had to know about the author's personal life, attitude, and society. The simple layman's terms goes something like this.
What the author wrote: "The curtains were blue."
What critics saw in the text: "The curtains being blue is a representation of the author's sadness and depression at his upbringing and his unhappiness at the lack of progress in society. From this we can infer that he was possibly even feeling suicidal while he wrote this scene, as he specifically points out the blue curtains and this was his way of asking for help."
What Roland thinks the author meant: "The curtains were blue."
Now, the video I saw was very convoluted and bounced around, but she was trying to play devil's advocate, using contemporary examples, fan fics, and interviews with an author friend. She also compared the extreme ends of the spectrum.
That's what I think it is. A spectrum. No two writers write the same way and bits of ourselves do slip into our writing. A scene may come across as more somber than it should because we just weren't feeling ourselves that day. That's one of the things editing is for though, to address voice and try to make sure it fits the narratives and is fairly uniform throughout the book.
Personally, when I write "The curtains were blue." it means the curtains were blue. I don't write in a way that incorporates my mental state, usually, into my descriptions. There have been times when I've written scenes or characters with a specific place or person in mind and I have been somewhat subjective in my descriptions of them.
Now, I'm not going to say there is or isn't a right way to write, or to read these books. Sometimes there is subtext to a scene or a character that has a personal connection to the author. One of the examples the woman in the video used was J.K. Rowling's pronouncement that Dumbledore was gay, calling it a publicity stunt that Rowling did because sales were slowing down.
As far as Dumbledore is concerned, as someone who's read the Harry Potter series multiple times, there is never really a point anywhere that his sexual orientation is needed, or is even convenient, to be explained. It has no relevance to most of the story, which is about Harry, not Dumbledore. That doesn't mean Rowling didn't know that detail the whole time she was writing, and then, when someone asked her about it, she finally had the chance to explain it, so she took it. It certainly didn't come across as a publicity stunt or trying to squeeze more sales out. (For God's sake, the woman's a millionaire now.)
Anyway, the point of "Death of the Author" is that the author is irrelevant to the story and doesn't know any more beyond the end than the reader. When you're reading, the writer may as well be dead or have never existed at all. While that's not true, it's also not true that you have to know the author's life story and read into every little detail to appreciate the writing.
Many writers will be happy to discuss their work after the fact, if you want to know what happens to characters after the book ends, feel free to ask. I'm happy to discuss my works. My attitude after a book ends though, is that if there was really more of interest, it would be part of the book, so for the most part, assume a happy ever after, or at least a normal, boring, average life like all of us real people live.
~ Shaun
