The Singer or the Song?

[MorpheusSandman]

vagantes, you have an amazing talent for what hawthorns described in his last post; writing something that is perfectly reasonable (like your first sentence in your last post), and then following that with a non-sequitor. "It would be amazing if like did not respond to like" assumes that the things that happen to the reader matches those of the writer, or that even if they have experienced the same things they would have responded to it in the same way. The most traumatic experience in my life was my long apostasy from Christianity, but I feel I came out of it with a very positive philosophy towards the universe, while some atheists come away from that experience with a terribly nihilistic view. So I can read the writings of another atheist writing about their abandonment of Christianity and completely fail to "respond" to that likeness because what they took away from it is completely different than what I took away from it. There are only a handful of universals when it comes to the human experience, and there are an infinity of variations built upon those universals. It seems that most of us have within us the capacity to be someone completely different with just a few changes in cognitive wiring. What's more, artists thrive upon being to express and represent people other than who they are. I don't know how you would propose we criticize the work of Shakespeare or other authors whom we know little about through your theories.

[hawthorns]

Speaking of 'traumatic experiences,' I think most of us would attach that description to this thread. I said my peace...

pax ex

[kelby_lake]

Charles Dickens was not a evil person as such, but he treated his wife extremely badly and more or less demonstrated that he was a selfish, amoral human being without feelings for other people.

How many genuinely "moral" writers are there? Perhaps the lure of writing fiction for "immoral/amoral" writers is to explore a morality that does not exist in their personal life rather than to promote their immorality.

I didn't know that Dickens was "amoral". "Immoral" perhaps if we judge him by the facts you've given, although as I've said, what writer is genuinely "moral"?

These facts do not make his writing less "worthy". What if we found out that he was actually a loveable old man who donated much of his money to charity? Does that make his writing any better?

Perhaps it isn't surprising that less-than-perfect writers should write seemingly "moral" stories. In order to be immoral, or even amoral, one is engaging with the nature of "morality".

Talk about serendipity: I almost fell off my chair this evening when I came across this remark in an essay about Barthes, and the way he tried to read texts:

"We may try to be semioticians, but autobiography is always breaking in".

Is this the writer's autobiography or our own moral values? Yes, our readings of texts are bound to be skewed by our own personal morals, but this is our "problem".

You also ignore the fact that not everybody is familiar with the writer's real life, or has an interest in discovering it.

[cafolini]

Both.

[Logos]

To ALL and ANY concerned..

Learn to ignore people you're irritated by.

Continuing dramatics, bickering, and arguments throughout the fora will get you a TIME OUT.