Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Autopsy of the Author

4 comments:

Richard Ray Chan said...

niceee i like what you did with it, sweet textures.

Ben Dayton said...

It's like the author is deified (looks almost Christ-like), but he is also like, dead or asleep and therefore vulnerable and incapable of extracting the book himself. He relies on the surgeons. They also rely on him to produce the book. Almost like they are harvesting it from the dead body like they bred and raised, then slaughtered the author and the book is the result. It looks like the surgeons are the ones working with the words and the author is a mere factory, or machinery of production. Kind of how society makes the author who in turn writes the book, maybe?
Excellent contrast between the realness of the author and the unreality or imaginative aspect of the surgeons. Truth lies within the author's heart and artificiality or something not quite real is the domain of the surgeons, is what I get from this. But I am not sure what to make of the surgeons, or what the symbolize. Society? Imagination?
Very intriguing, Maritsa. Well rendered too.

fire-plug said...

Ben, you've hit the nail on the head. :)

I've imagined the surgeons as the (almost faceless) scholars and audience members who are not thought of as individuals, but as part of the mass who takes it upon themselves to shape the author's image and define the author as a quack or monument. In this case, I definitely agree with what you said, the public really does breed and raise their authors just to slaughter them and harvest their writing. After the author dies, the floodgates open to allow the surgeons to reanalyze, dissect, extract whatever they want from the author now that he cannot defend himself. And if they are looking for a masterpiece at his heart, that is exactly what they will find.

Ben Dayton said...

Well articulated Maritsa. I like your point about how the surgeons (critics/cultural scholars/powers that be) define what is good and why and the author has no say. And it is very subjective and reflective of the culture. We are discussing this in my criticism class. Reminds me of how Moby Dick was considered such shit in the 1850's but now it's an all time classic. Maybe in a 100 years it will be obsolete, who knows.