[same reader, different readings]

[reenka]

Heheh, I've just seen the words 'JKR is god' used (mockingly) in a sentence, and I wonder.... Because while I don't believe in any Author really holding power over what I think in most circumstances, the very act of reading seems to be a temporary relinquishing of that sort of power, at its heart. If it doesn't work, that's when I start to feel... bereft. Empty. Like it's only words; only stupid shadows on the wall.

I think I have a very close relationship to most books I really love (or enjoy being a Reader of), in the sense that I pay as much attention to them as possible. If I love it, I will notice a million little details about it, and I'll try to see what's 'really there' without even thinking about it-- I read carefully if I really read; I get lost in the world of the story, stop to look at the sights, allow myself to believe all manner of impossible, fantastical things. And that's what I love about reading fantasy especially-- letting go and flowing, allowing the writer to make me think 'yes, unicorns exist' while I'm reading.

So in this sense, the Author is god, because they do recreate the world in any shape they want, as long as they're good at it.


If I questioned 'do unicorns exist' while reading The Last Unicorn, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly so much. If I thought, 'no way a unicorn would care about others of its kind-- it's a magical being with better things to do than thinking about things in the world' (or something), the whole thing would fall apart. So on one level, I just don't want to understand the sort of mindset that makes people really want to believe that, for instance, Lucas' movies are really a parable about Republicans or whatever. I haven't even seen the last movie yet (I know, can you believe it?), but any possible enjoyment I could have would be dashed if I had any sort of self-consciousness about things not being what they seem as I watched. Afterwards, of course, discussion can go anywhere, because one starts to process.

Also, I should add that it's possible to enjoy things one is fully aware are bad; I certainly like and read/watch lots of shlocky stuff because it's all in fun. I wouldn't want to think about it too hard, but it's mind-candy and I loves my mind-candy. I also think it's not as if the things I love are sacred to me & I take them oh-so-seriously & can't bear to see them mocked/deconstructed/reduced to component parts or just misunderstood entirely & treated as above Republican parable. I think taking -anything- that seriously is a bad idea and is apt to lead to high blood-pressure and not much else.
     And there's another addendum about laughing at something -while- enjoying it, which is also not really counterproductive to suspending disbelief-- sort of like one can snort at Jar Jar (who wouldn't? I mean, really, what living conscious human being over the age of 6?) and still enjoy the omg-light-sabers and omg-true-Jedi-love. Or something. It's all in fun, and you don't have to fixate on the things that distract you from the experience (as long as there aren't too many, or the mocking isn't part of the enjoyment).

I say this as someone who's made almost purely ecstatic by reading in a very childish way, and it's been this way ever since I'd started when I was 9 years old. To that child self, reading was equivalent to make-believe: I make believe this is true, I make believe the author isn't really there and this story is happening to me in some way, and I (usually) make believe I'm the main character, too.
    And I guess I have a lot of affection for that mode of reading, even though I know it's not the only way to do it, obviously, if nothing else because this mode is very specifically tailored to fantasy & fairy-tales and children themselves. I know I'm childish, and I know I should be more critical, but my pleasure dwindles when I think too much. I remember things (like H/D, for instance) are pretty ridiculous and unlikely, and people aren't even doing them well. I become bitter and disenchanted (quite literally!), sneering at the sand-castles people are ooh'ing and aah'ing over. This isn't real, I think then. You're all deluded, what with taking spit for pearls and leaving the pearls untouched.

Then again, I've never really been able to reconcile being a person who compulsively analyzes and a person who gets lost in make-believe worlds.

I guess I'm just saying that when I'm discussing a canon or creating fanon, I'm not being a reader, though drawing fanart seems different, more immediate and complementary to the act of reading itself. Maybe because as a reader I do love the author (and if I really like a story I usually have a problem with transferring my affection for it to the writer, but I don't think I'm alone in this); I'm being something else. I don't know what-- a fan? But a fan isn't a reader/watcher, per se. It seems like fans would watch/read differently somehow, as well, though I can't put my finger on how-- analytically, perhaps? I have a feeling it would depend on the type of fan, since I can easily see times when fan = mindless squeeing fangirl (yaye! another fic where HARRY & DRACO SNOG OMG!!1). Meaning, a number of people seem to enjoy things based on category rather than content itself, which does scare me but I understand it (see above re: mind-candy).

    I do have to make that distinction though, because I don't think a critical reading is 'just' a reading-- it's a specific type, equally valid but... well, in some ways I think it's distanced from the traditional sheer private pleasure that is reading itself.
    Personally, in HP, I'm much more of a critic/consumer/producer of fanon than canon, and it seems as if both have many pitfalls. I mean, we all know each other at least somewhat, those that aren't lurkers. But fact remains, I wouldn't be here for canon, never in a million years. I really enjoyed reading the last three books (and not the first two), but the idea that fanon = canon fan (or anti-fan) hits pretty close to home for me too. I mean, in some ways I'm a canon fan in HP and in some ways I'm really not, but regardless I'm not in fandom and I don't analyze canon because of my reading experience one way or the other. It's like my affection for both fanon & canon are parallel but never quite intersect, and they certainly don't seem causally related, even though I do wish both had some more elements of the other. I mean, how cool would it be to see more Slytherin development in the books? But basically, I don't care what she does, as long as she keeps doing what she's doing, which is all I can really expect of any writer.

It just makes more sense to me to care about the quality/details of something so much more -immediate- and present to me (that is, HP fanon); I think this makes me weird & outside both the fanon & canon-centric 'camps', 'cause I totally think it should 'make sense' in regards to canon & I think ignoring canon (not to say following it) makes your fic rather unreadable to someone who doesn't want to lift heavy weights to suspend disbelief. So this is a practical issue for me, but I get the sense this critical-yet-positive view of fanon is even more contentious than a critical-yet-positive view of canon, 'cause fanon/fanfic writing isn't supposed to be serious and you're not in fandom for it to start with, etc. Well... I mean, I am.

I remember ever since I was little, one of my favorite activities after I saw a movie with my mom (which we did a lot of together as I was growing up), was talking about it and making random levels of commentary on the plot, performances, the possible stupidity or amazing what-have-you of the characters, how pretty that one actress was, what they -should- have done, what was missing, how it was right, how it was wrong, how -this- worked but that didn't, blah-blah-blah. It's what we all do, right? Well, I mean, blab about stuff we enjoyed (or hated!) with our friends :D To me at least, there's no other reason to go see a movie with someone else!

    The thing that's different from the act of reading here is that it could be an immediate group activity-- not just about joining a fandom and blabbing afterwards, but something you can really share. That's why I've always felt that me-as-a-canon-reader and me-and-as-fandom-partipant aren't really... the same thing at all, because time always passes and my mental state shifts from the immediate response-babble fugue I go into (as anyone who'd seen me feedback fanfics knows).

Me-as-fanon-writer and me-as-reader are related, of course; I do get inspired by canon, but the reason I can write HP fic at all is because in many ways it's close to my inner universe to start with. Sure, in many ways I'd -never- think of something like this in quite this way, but there's magic, and boys with destinies, and schools, and a million little borrowed details from the collective archetype database. It's a fantasy hodgepodge, really, and that's got to be a big reason I feel so comfortable with HP. It's... rather an interesting quiltwork of a universe, ripe for picking at and rethreading and playing with; plus, I'm obscenely familiar with it by now, but that's as a co-creator, not a reader-- important distinction because I feel things like thinking 'this is where this room would go' in a house I didn't build and never even seen all of. It's got a dreamspace in it that I inhabit.
    But even so, that's not me as a reader speaking, it's me as a dreamer, as a writer, as someone who lives & breathes fantasy. Does that make sense?

I guess it's important to me that there are different (equally valid & worthwhile) ways of reading, and different ways of being a reader; in some of these mind-states, the Author is god-- He creates, you inhabit. In some, you are a sort of demigod-- you both create on top what's already there, put little finishing touches, or just generally enjoy yourself and rape pretty sacrificial maidens. In some, there is no god, only the Text-- only the world itself, untouchable and untouched. There's only what Is, and you're not really interacting so much as observing. The scientist's viewpoint, much beloved but so hollow if that was my only way of being a reader.

I think, though, that maybe I'm (halfway willfully) misunderstanding what the whole 'author as god' concept is going after anyway. I'm running away with the concept, thinking of it in pretty metaphorical terms, not really in terms of lit-crit theory. It's not that the writing is hollow if there is only itself-- because there is always only ever itself (as in, what else is there? if you don't know anything about the author and/or they're dead, this is particularly relevant). It's only that it seems like one could feel the personality or the Will shaping the fictional world quite clearly, without knowing them or needing to like them-- one can still feel like, 'knock knock', someone's there, otherwise the writing lacks a personal touch. I'd call this element of 'godhood' style, actually.

All my favorite writers are very present in terms of style if nothing else-- as in, I could always tell it's -them-, it's their work. So the hollowness would be in that missing sense of a Voice behind the story, especially one strong enough to carry me away. You don't have to listen to the Voice any more than I'd listen to a god (well, I wouldn't), but if it was missing, things would get so... depersonalized. Perhaps it's that even when stories aren't your own, one somehow embodies them by telling them, and in some way by reading them. Not owning or representing in any literal sense, any direct equivalence between text & author, but a subtler mark that a story always leaves on you and through you, in the telling as well as the reading.

Stories aren't objective, dry things; and in a way this is what the 'only the Reader' thing is pointing at-- that one owns the story one reads-- and I think one does-- it's just that it's not a solitary ownership. The act of reading seems to be a synthesis of the reader & writer's voice, though of course the reader could totally misunderstand what the writer's saying, which is where the Ideal Reader concept probably comes in. Perhaps I just think in terms of the story having vessels rather than being owned by anyone.

...And yeah, all this makes me think of the nature of myths/fables/fairy-tales (and fanon!), which isn't a product of a singular Voice, but many. Even so, there seems to be quite a 'Voice', a presence of some sort behind them... just a subtler, manifold presence. Perhaps, then, there are always a multitude of gods, hiding in the corners; all the gods of our subconscious archetypes and dreams.

Hahah, I'll stop rambling now; I could go on forever on this general topic, I dunno if that's obvious :>
~~

    Semi-randomly, I find I'm really bitter about people seemingly not wanting to think too hard when they read; I realize this is very hypocritical of me, but then I don't have to think consciously (I just tend to understand most things well enough anyway).
    Then again, every time someone says a story was 'confusing', I sort of twitch, 'cause people've said it so often to me. I'm apt to blame myself; it's not that -expect- people to think about what they read or anything, but I can be susceptible to the 'but it's so obvious!' thing as much as anyone. I really wonder how most other people read, though: do they really filter everything through their lenses of what 'works' and what doesn't, what makes sense in their own context and what seems too weird and unexpected and is therefore confusing & somehow wrong?

Well, I mean, I'm very rarely confused by pretty much anything in a story, unless it's just phrased weirdly and I need to think just to figure out what the author is saying; I don't tend to find I -need- to think (confusedly or not)-- I just... well, I understand, and that's good enough to react with. Not that I'm claiming I'm -right-, just... it works for me in my head, and that's what counts. If it doesn't, I think the fic's bad, not 'confusing'. I have a feeling I'm admitting to a fairly high degree of implicit arrogance with this, ahahah.

I suspect it all comes down to people having different goals in reading as in writing, especially in reading shipper-fic and/or fanfic romance. And of course there's no problem with this, it's fascinating, it's just that it makes me frustrated to be in a taste minority, I suppose. To put it plainly, I don't seem to like the things most people like in fiction, or at least I like them done differently or more complexly while still less so than the people who like things really complex (meaning, hey, I read fanfic, not War and Peace knock-offs). What am I even saying anymore? Hell if I know. But I am saying it! Yaye, etc.
~~

....And to think I wanted to write a ficlet where Harry ran into walls and/or wore panties on his head earlier today. I would've made it work somehow!

Possibly with ribbons. And glue. Glue has to be involved.

Also triples, references to Hana Barbera cartoons and polar bears. Randomness = love. That is all.

Comments

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

BELIAL! *humpssnuggles* Of course I recognise him/her.

PEOPLE ARE SO CUTE WHEN THEY'RE THE POUTY FERRETS OF EVIL, WHY DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND :((

So... when are you going to write the fic with similar CAPSLOCK-EMO!Harry making on evil-pouty!Draco because he's so cute? :D