Mr. Fab

Reading Barthes' "The Death of an Author" makes me realize my senior year high school English teacher must have been a fan of his. The one comment he made all year that has stood with me all these years was the idea that he "didn't care who the author was or what they meant to say, once the words are on the page, that's what they mean." I remember thinking at the time that this was a crazy idea, but as I've continued in English I think I'm starting to feel the same way. Barthes' piece ends with the line "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" and this is okay with me.

While the Author is a necessary component to the composition of the novel, he is not the end all be all of the final product. One cannot blame any deficiencies of a work on the Author's flaws in life, but rather on the work itself, the language that makes up the text. Through this realization we also open up the door to a new wave of criticism, one that doesn't over value the Author, but allows the reader to gain some importance in the understanding and analysis of the text. This concept of removing the Author from the final work might seem a bit odd at first, but when you really think about it, my teacher was right, who cares what they meant to say, what did they say? By giving the reader more authority in understanding the text it is only logical that someone loses authority, and who more fitting than the Author.