The fallacy of authorial intent

[breakinglight11]

Ever notice that Hamlet talks about "the undiscovered country from which no man returns" even though he's just SEEN A FREAKING GHOST? A lot of people argue that Shakespeare had some deep point he was making with that contradiction, but you know what? I think he just made a mistake.

In my writing program my teachers all treat as an axiom the idea that everything that is in a piece of written work was put there with absolute intention by the writer-- if it's in there, they say, it was put there deliberately, for a very definite reason, and therefore should be treated with the appropriate importance. But as a writer, i have to say I find that to be a load of bull. Yes, if it's there, somebody had to write it, but the reasons why they wrote it could be for the dumbest things.

Maybe the writer didn't know what to say at a particular part, so they just said some shit. Maybe they had a really good beginning and really good ending and they needed SOMETHING in there to bridge point A and point B. (I have that one a lot.) Maybe they wrote something that seems prfound and fitting to you but they really just stumbled onto it without realizing how well it worked. (I've had that one too!) Point is, I seriously doubt every single but of every piece is put there because of some deep, totally thought-out and internally-consistent reasoning. 

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

It may be apocryphal, but I always think of William Faulkner's response to all the student essays he received over the years about his short story, "The Bear": "I guess I need to re-read that."

BTW, I don't see it as a contradiction. Calling a friend in California is not the same thing as returning to California. I'm entirely open to Bard-fallibility, but he may simply not have seen the contradiction.

[darkoni]

Also, sometimes things may have been put in at one point that fit right, but fit less so after edits and got missed later.

But yeah, sometimes you just need a way to connect things.

[lightgamer.livejournal.com]

Relevant: http://joyreactor.com/post/303660

[laurion]

You know, what ever drivel will fill out the meter and if needed, rhyme scheme. I think he'd have slipped in "There once was a man from Nantucket" if he'd known it.