welcome to my brain

Walking through the bookstore the other day, I noticed something strange: all I saw, everywhere, were names of authors all around the room. I didn't see really any titles of books, or many pictures on the covers, either; just huge, bold, sometimes even fluorescent names of authors. On the side, here, is an example of a book like this- it's obvious that Danielle Steel wrote it, since her name is so prominently displayed at the top of the cover in bold black. Notice that the title of the book, The House, is at the bottom of the cover, in smaller letters, and is almost disguised by being nearly the same color as the background.
I've noticed this for a long time, actually, and I just think it's kind of obnoxious. Do the authors really think they are that important that they need to put their names that huge on the book cover?

Apparently, Roland Barthes noticed this, too. In "The Death of the Author," he says that this incredible, illogical emphasis on the author is "...the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology, which has attached the greatest importance to the 'person' of the author." He definitely hit it on the head here: in our capitalistic society, the prestige of the individual is both bankable and desirable. I think this is American individualism at its finest-- any opportunity to put yourself on a pedestal is crucial. Just look at reality television. Even though these people make complete asses out of themselves, just the chance to get on TV and be a "star" and seen by millions of people completely bypasses any sense of dignity. I think I'm getting really far from the original point, but the reality TV thing does relate to the whole capitalist-individualism thing.

Anyway, when reading The Death of the Author, I was under the impression that Barthes was from the 1800s or something, since most of the essays we've read in the Norton Anthology have been by people from the 1800s. I was reading this, thinking, wow! Things must have been the same back then as they are now, in regards to capitalism and the importance of the individual. But then I looked at the year he wrote it, and it was written in 1968. I stand corrected.

So, considering what we've been talking about in class with Structuralism and Romanticism, I think it's safe to say that the Romantics would say that the Author is divine, while a Structuralist would disagree and say that the reader is what's important. Words are just words on a page until the reader reads them and rewrites them in his/her head. I think Barthes would be included in the Structuralist category, considering his dislike for the elevated "importance" of the author. More on this later.

Is the thought what really counts?
OK, let's say you are a female (not to be sexist or anything, but this is purely hypothetical). You hear a knock on the door, and when you open the door, your boyfriend is standing there, beaming. You let him in, wondering what he's smiling about.
"Hi! I thought about buying you flowers today. Isn't that great?!" he says, still smiling.
Would this make you happy? I mean, it's nice that he thought about buying you flowers, but is that really the same thing as actually getting them for you?
That is kind of a vague example, so let me try another one.
It's Valentine's Day, and you found your boyfriend the perfect gift (yes, this is a female speaking. Sorry for the bias, but it's what I know!) and can't wait to give it to him. You don't expect anything big from him, but he's been hinting at getting you this beautiful necklace you've been talking about for a long time. You give your boyfriend the gift you bought him, and he's ecstatic. He seems really excited to give you your gift, so you close your eyes and eagerly wait for him to put that necklace on you.
Well, you sit there with your eyes closed for about five minutes with a stupid smile on your face, and nothing happens. You finally open your eyes, and just look at your boyfriend, waiting for something to happen.
"I thought about getting you that necklace you want...but I didn't...umm..." he says, trailing off. "Isn't it the thought that counts? Huh?"
Again, these aren't really realistic examples. What I'm trying to say is that it ISN'T the thought that counts, with anything. Wimsatt and Beardsley would agree with me.
W & B, in their "intentional fallacy," say that in regards to literature (specifically poetry), the intention of the poet is irrelevant when the reader interprets the poem. Apparently, many poets thought that they could write poems with hidden meaning that only they understand, or they wrote poems that just didn't make sense. If the reader, in searching for the meaning of the poem, can't determine it by him/herself by purely reading the poem, and the reader feels the need to look at biographical information to figure out what the meaning of the poem is, then the poem is rendered to be inadequate. Basically, if there is a distinction between what the poet meant to do, and what the poem actually does, then the poem is ineffective.
So, let's take this poem:

"Riding the bike in the rain
I go to Mr. Bob's house
Apple pie and strudels
The cat
and scrambled eggs and bacon."

Isn't that a wonderful poem? It's so groundbreaking and fresh! What do you think it means?
I'm sure you could pull some kind of random meaning out of it, but it really doesn't make sense. I wrote that amazing piece of work, by the way. And if you wanted to figure out what it meant, you could go into my biography and see that I lived next door to Mr. Bob when I was little, and his family made me apple pie and strudels, with a side of eggs and bacon. Oh, and he had a cat that I liked. After you read that information, you could maybe get what the poem meant.
BUT, if that's what it took to figure out what my poem meant, then that was basically a bad poem. Well, maybe not a bad poem, but it is ineffective. Poems like that are kind of a secret code, and that isn't cool because it isn't public, that's private. There's no way anyone could figure out exactly what I meant by just reading the poem. And, according to W & B, no one should have to figure out what I meant- if the reader couldn't figure it out by reading the poem, then that's just bad.
That's just a way I try to understand the Intentional Fallacy. It's the fallacy of intent. What you intend is irrelevant; what you do is what's relevant. I think this could apply to many different areas of life.