Intrusions into an author’s virgin text

But can anyone read beyond this personal inclinations? Because, to justify intrusions into an author’s virgin text, an editor must surely not be Felix Chuckle who delights in happy endings or Dolores Lachrymose who prefers her endings bitter. The editor must be a sort of Platonic idea of a reader; he must embody “readerness”; he must be a Reader with a capital R.
But can even the ideal Reader help the writer? As every reader knows, literature is an act of shared responsibility. But to suppose that this mutual act allows us to know the goal the writer has set herself, a goal that in most cases is not revealed even to the writer, is either simple-minded or fatuously arrogant. (…)
When editors try to gues an author’s “intention” (that rhetorical concept invented by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century), when they question the author about the meaning of certain passages or the reason for certain events, they are assuming that a work of literature can be reduced to a set of rules or explained in a précis. This prodding, this reductive exercise is indeed a threat, because the writer may (as Findley did) pay heed and upset the delicate balance of his creation.

The secret sharer [fragment]

uit: Into the looking-glass wood - Alberto Manguel

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