In a message dated 2/4/00 3:23:31 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

>  Clearly, the joke was on me -- and the teacher made
>  the point that the writer doesn't always know the meaning of his or her
>  own work.

This is what that Zeitgeist stuff is about in literary theory. Authors
reflect their environment unconsciously. Some authors more than others. If
you consider that art occurs when an individual has reached a level of
mastery in the expression of their craft then you have to accomodate that the
full person is engaged in the act of art, which means both conscious and
unconsious portions of the individual -- saying nothig about the collective
unconsious and the Face on Mars. On the other hand, a discussion as to if
Baum was conscious of his allegories is irrelevant to our reading of his
work. Such discussions of original intention, which cannot be verified as the
original intender is not available to provide corrections, is usually a
seperate entertainment from the experience of the work itself, with the
exception being conceptual works in which the ongoing discussion is the form
of the intended art. All written work, as with all art, is there to be
missconstrued... it is the relevance of the experience of the reader, in
depth of understanding or emotions, that has meaning. The reader's experience
of a literary art goes beyond the rational reading that we would apply to a
more serious text, such as a legal text or tax filing instructions. To engage
the heart and soul means a writer has to dip into some pretty difficult zones
of the human psyche... that there would be bleed over, conscious or
unconsioius, into contemporary politics is the rule, not the exception. There
is, in Gab & Eti, an almost word for word distortion of a Time magazine
article about Michael Forbes... it is in the BP archives. Which brings up
another interesting phenomena, that when a writer writes about an individual
that the individual in reading the text, if not forwarned, will tend to think
that they are reading about someone else than themselves. This may be true,
or not, but it is one of those little lies that helps writers get past their
blocks. What I think particularly relevant in the discussion of Baum's
original intentions is the reader's exploration of the self-consciousness of
an author as witnessed by the archival body of their work. Is an author
supposed to be self-conscious? Do we need our author's to be self-conscious?
Are author's that are more self-conscious likewise more highly regarded as
authors? Is there a correlation between the trend that self-conscious artists
are less likely to be published than say, Ken Follett.

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