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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8807907" data-attributes="member: 4937">While there is some truth to that, too often to me the modern readers assertion that what they glean from a text is what matters and not what the author intended to say strikes me as a combination of laziness and narcissism.&nbsp; I very much feel that the &quot;death of the author&quot; is just an excuse for no longer approaching a text ready to do the work and rigor of figuring out what it says.&nbsp; If you claim that the author's intent doesn't matter and that the meaning of the text is what you absorb, then you are excusing yourself of a lack of all reading comprehension.&nbsp; I do appreciate that you seem to admit that a good author conveys their meaning clearly as that is a more nuanced take than I tend to encounter, but I suspect that poor readers will tend to claim all authors are poor ones. There is a parallel situation in RPGs where players and even some GMs have a tendency to think like the GM is the only participant in the game that has to act and play skillfully in order for the game to be &quot;good&quot;, and that players have no social obligation to themselves play skillfully and put forth effort.&nbsp;&nbsp; We have a tendency to act like in RPGs that all the burden is on the GM to make a good game, and that if anything goes wrong it's something that the GM did - bad GM.&nbsp; But while I agree that the GM has the greater burden and responsibility, I don't agree that the player has no responsibility, or that the player because he is playing a game has no requirement to put forth effort and to try to become a skillful player.In the same way, I tend to think that in order to make the assessment as to whether a writer is good or bad, you must be a rigorous enough reader to discern what the writer is trying to say, before you can assess whether they did a good job of it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8807907, member: 4937"] While there is some truth to that, too often to me the modern readers assertion that what they glean from a text is what matters and not what the author intended to say strikes me as a combination of laziness and narcissism. I very much feel that the "death of the author" is just an excuse for no longer approaching a text ready to do the work and rigor of figuring out what it says. If you claim that the author's intent doesn't matter and that the meaning of the text is what you absorb, then you are excusing yourself of a lack of all reading comprehension. I do appreciate that you seem to admit that a good author conveys their meaning clearly as that is a more nuanced take than I tend to encounter, but I suspect that poor readers will tend to claim all authors are poor ones. There is a parallel situation in RPGs where players and even some GMs have a tendency to think like the GM is the only participant in the game that has to act and play skillfully in order for the game to be "good", and that players have no social obligation to themselves play skillfully and put forth effort. We have a tendency to act like in RPGs that all the burden is on the GM to make a good game, and that if anything goes wrong it's something that the GM did - bad GM. But while I agree that the GM has the greater burden and responsibility, I don't agree that the player has no responsibility, or that the player because he is playing a game has no requirement to put forth effort and to try to become a skillful player. In the same way, I tend to think that in order to make the assessment as to whether a writer is good or bad, you must be a rigorous enough reader to discern what the writer is trying to say, before you can assess whether they did a good job of it. [/QUOTE]

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