The death of the 'The Death of the Author' author

After I watched her read the last page she let the book fall to the
floor and without really looking where she was going she got up and
walked out. On the first of January nineteen-eighty I had suddenly
started seeing people reading 'nineteen-eighty-four' at bus stops, on
trains, in cafes. I guessed that it would not be long before copies of
it would be dropped at the launderette; I had four by February. She
forgot her washing in the machine and her soap powder on her seat. A
week later she skulked back in wearing a pair of ill-fitting flared
cords with no socks and a low cut white blouse. By this time I'd read
her copy of nineteen-eighty-four. If I was bored of my job before I
read it then I don't need to tell you how I felt afterwards. To ease my
tedium I'd started trying to unnerve the customers by referencing
whatever book I'd seen them reading. I found that randomly announcing
Oceanian catch phrases worked well.

"Uh...my clothes...I think I left them here last
week...sorry...I...uh...I forget to pick them up," she said.

"Oh yes, I've got them here. Are you sure you didn't forget anything
else?"

"...no, no, I don't think so..."

"War is peace" I whispered to her across the counter in my most
conspiratorial big brother tone.

"What?" She looked as though she might faint. She didn't ask about the
book although I did notice her eyes scanning the shelves behind
me.

"War and peace? Someone forgot their copy of war and peace, it's not
yours then..."

As she ambled out with the bundle of clothes in her arms I noticed she
glanced around, presumably for telescreens.

The hardened Kerouac readers are a funny bunch. They shuffle in, all
fringe and thick black-rimmed glasses, then they sit down on their own
and smoke. They never seem to focus on anything, they just glance
around with mole eyes and scribble in a notebook. The launderette is
too white and lifeless I suppose, not the sort of place for beats to
hang out. I'm not saying anyone particularly enjoys a launderette but
the Kerouac readers have an expression which suggests a particular
disdain for modern conveniences. That's why they are in Paris I
suppose: the cafes, the poetry, the architecture, the weather. Paris
still carries a lot of the same charms it must have done thirty years
ago.

Every now and then you see them having to deal with real life: parking
tickets, Pink Floyd, red Ferraris, shoulder pads and launderettes. You
see them shrink back into their shells, hiding there faces with
Ginsberg or Snyder. Even in conversation you can see them wince when
someone says "lingo" or "rad," they look like someone has just woken
them up, flashing a torch in their eyes. I respect these people though,
I admire their commitment to the text, they don't listen to the people
who say he was a phoney, a drop out alcoholic, and they don't let the
eighties stop them living in the sixties.

It's always annoyed me that people have this desire to distance
themselves from the writing, it almost seems like a damage limitation
mechanism to insure they never feel too much emotion. No-one seems to
commit, everyone sees writing as "symptomatic" of something, or
"representative" of something else, I'm not saying it isn't but why
bother spoiling everything with this sickly coating of perspective. I
listen to the literature students chatting about books they are
studying and it seems to me like a game where they see who can dig
fastest. Spades at the ready they see who can get furthest away from
the feeling of just reading and enjoying a book.

"Of course the ocean is also the fertility of Cancer, the female
principle. By his sacrificial death, king Ahab fertilises the sea,
which then gives birth to their offspring in Ishmael."

"Yes, that may be, but you are really looking at the book in a very
limited sense. Just as everything tends to return to unity, so there is
a countervailing tendency toward separateness. Thus after every
shipwreck of the ego, after every sacrifice of the king, some remnant
of the crew, some separatist Ishmael keeps bobbing up to the
surface again, ready to start a new story."

"Well, I'm perfectly aware of that but you seem to be assuming that
Melville's conception of iconoclasm is in anyway aligned with..."

And so on...

At the risk of sounding like what I'm criticising I like to think of
these conversations in terms of meat. First off, there is the animal,
the book, let's say a chicken, and it is happy and alive. Then it is
turned into drumsticks, broken down, and, at first, the student
carnivores eat the succulent meat and at this stage it has value,
albeit limited. It tastes good although I'd still prefer to have a
living animal. Once they have got most of the important meaty bits off
it they learn to fight over the scraps, the details, the
potentialities, the gristle. Finally they're left with the tasteless
bone and they keep going right down to the marrow, eroding away any
sense of what the chicken tasted like, let alone how the chicken
behaved. When I read a book I try and be as vegetarian as I can (has
this meataphor gone too far?) avoiding hurting the animal if I can,
this is not to say I don't have a functioning critical faculty. I am
willing to be carnivorous where it is required and, I admit, sometimes
it is necessary. For example, I'll be honest, I never really liked
Kerouac and I couldn't work out why, in this circumstance, where the
book was not moving me in anyway, I think it is justifiable to dig, or
eat, in this rather wasteful way just to get to the root of the
problem. Equally, when a book itself invites a deeper reading or at
least a more thorough examination I am willing to indulge but I do not
ever consider it standard procedure.

There was plenty of people reading Camus as you might imagine in a
Parisian Launderette. It was mostly 'The Outsider' and 'The Fall' that
got dropped behind seats or left next to dryers. The thing about 'The
Outsider' is even I can sense there is some sort of a philosophy behind
it. I can see that but I wouldn't be able to, nor would I want to,
reduce it to a few sentences or even a few pages because it's already
there, in the book. The only insight into the novel's 'message' is that
which is already given to me in my reading. I feel that any close
spoken or written analysis of what it 'means' would not only be
reductive but it would be a treachery to the book's protagonist
Meursault, who is nothing if not honest. Extensive literary analysis,
it seems to me, is just an elaborate lie, not necessarily because it is
not true, but because it is a fabrication. For example, any link
between two books is a construction, for me each book exists on its
own. Even by trying to explain this I feel a bit like I'm diluting the
novel, allowing it to spill messily out through my writing.

Until I worked at the launderette I hadn't read a book since I was in
school unless you count the washing machine instruction manual. Someone
dropped 'Tess of the D'urbervilles' and, in retrospect, I can't imagine
a worse book as a literary starter but that was all there was so I read
it. I read it again and again and I can safely say at that time I never
wanted to read another book in my life. Just Tess and me, settle down,
buy an early hardback edition and live in the country. I remember one
day I was rereading it for the umpteenth time at work and the girl who
had originally dropped the book came in and asked me If it was hers. I
told her that it was my copy, which, to my mind, was no longer a lie.
She nodded and shrugged.

"Have you read anything else by him?" She asked.

"By who?"

"By Hardy of course, like 'Jude the Obscure' or 'The
Woodlanders'?"

I didn't say anything. She shook her head to try and encourage a
reaction.
I blinked twice and she took this is as a no.

"Oh well, you ought to, they are very good if a little long winded and
pessimistic but of course you will already know that..."
Her voice trailed off. I found that I had no concept of my own facial
expression, I suspected that my mouth was open and my eyes looked like
marbles. She smiled at me as she took the dryer tokens from my
hand.

"Thanks," she said.

This is the first time I was made truly aware of literature as a
construct. Something someone wrote; the book's spine transformed into a
real spine, sprouting limbs and pen-ready opposable thumbs. Of course,
I realised that books have to be written, imagined by someone, but it
was the realisation of an author as a kind of magician, a trickster
which upset me. That someone could invent Tess and then go and invent
someone else, like Jude for example. It seemed to debase the whole
process of reading. When a world is created in such a convincing way it
seems painful to concede that the author did not devote their entire
being, their whole life, every ounce of energy, into realising that
world on the page. That Tess could be one of many frightened me. I
imagined a conversation with the author, Thomas Hardy, something that
had never crossed my mind before.

"So how on earth did you make Tess?"

"Well I wrote Tess, along with Jude, in a period of great productivity
towards the end of my life," Tom replied.

Great productivity! What does that mean?

"But how could you go on after the emotional trauma that must have been
involved in such a book?"

"Well, I had a first draft of Tess from ages ago but I forgot about it
and only just recently got around to finishing it..."

It made me angry, I felt like Tess had lost a limb or something. A bit
was missing, she wasn't mine anymore but his, or shared between us, I'm
not too sure. I was tempted, although I never did, to go out and buy
other books by Thomas Hardy to catch up, claim back a few pieces of him
as revenge for his quiet theft of my beloved.

The second thing that happened stemmed from the girl saying the book
was pessimistic. This may seem strange to hardened literature types but
I had just never thought of attaching a set of ideas about the world to
the novel. Yes, it is a heartbreakingly sad story but it had never
crossed my mind that the book could be considered a means of expressing
a particular view of the world. I don't doubt that in the recesses of
my mind I was aware of the overall outlook presented by the book but I
was never conscious of it, that's the important bit. Consciousness, as
I see it, is not something to strive for.

One of the best things about the launderette was that all the books I
found had no link between them except that they were read and forgotten
about by people who use 'Julie's' Laundrette' which, I'll admit, is not
exactly a representative cross-section of world reading but better than
nothing. So I jumped about literature without any pattern or path, this
was good in that it helped me separate myself from that literature as
history, as sociology, as science, mentality that I saw in the students
who would uninterestedly browse through books that had had me in tears.
I used to enjoy the reactions of students who would come and see me
reading Ted Hughes and say "Oh, he is a monster, how can you read
that?" And I would reply "oh, I've never heard of him before, I just
picked it up off the floor and thought it wonderful." There was a tug
of war behind their eyes, the lecturers and text books on one side and
a seven-year old, pre-English studies, version of themselves on the
other.

Today someone dropped a book which I am very interested in reading.
It's rather unenticingly called 'Image - Music - Text'. It's a
collection of essays I think. What drew me to it was one essay in
particular called 'The Death of the Author'. I'm not quite sure what
I'm expecting from it but hopefully It might undo some of the damage to
my reading enjoyment that resulted from the Hardy escapade. When I
first flicked through it a press clipping fell out, I think someone had
been using it as a page marker. It's got a black and white picture of
the author, Roland Barthes, giving a talk in Paris. I must say I would
have found it rather ironic if the book had had a picture of the author
on the back. It's a black and white photo but you can tell by the
slightly unkempt thinness of his hair that he is not blonde but going
grey. He has a kind of Roman nose and warm doughy wrinkles around his
eyes and mouth. He looks very serious.

I started to read the book and I confess I found it difficult in parts
to follow his train, or hot-air balloon, of thought. I bought a
dictionary to help me with some of the more obtuse words and I was
amazed to find that even the pocket OED does not have all the words he
uses. 'Desacrilization' and 'constitutively' to name two of my
favourites.

The essay makes no mention of my potential return to being the
unthinking reader of old but instead I am offered an alternative. I'll
try and paraphrase him. Rather than seeing books as written by an
author I should see that all books and language, I think, are
ultimately made up of each other and therefore no single author can be
held responsible for a piece of writing. This idea seemed counter
productive to me at first but I am beginning to see its value. He puts
forward the idea of 'text', a kind of gaseous all-consuming fabric in
which all writing and language exists. Everything we say, write, read
is, in a sense, a quotation. My first thought was that this then
suggests that all novels get mixed up in to one big mess. This is
anticipated, and countered. I'll start quoting since it seems easier
'the reader is the space on which all the quotations are inscribed
without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin
but in its destination.' I'll admit to feeling slightly better having
read this.

I started reading my first book post-'The Death of the Author'. I was
far more relaxed; I felt I was able to escape into the novel more and
not feel in any way uninvolved or distanced. I'm rereading 'The
Outsider', finding it more involving, not a thought for trying to
compare and contrast it to other works or trying to pin it down,
nothing so trivial...

____________________

Having only had the time and will to read a couple of chapters of
'Image - Music - Text' I am venturing back to complete it.

Strange first chapter about photography. I stopped before it did any
damage to the way I look at my holiday snaps. A chapter, 'structural
analysis of narrative', sent my head spinning, making me feel a bit
worried that he was taking something to bits in a way that it could
never be reassembled. Also a chapter on 'Diderot, Brecht and
Eisenstein'. Again his writing confuses me; it strikes me as
hypocritical that he groups together authors in such a constructed way.
I am beginning to feel swindled by Barthes (Note: I have given up on
trying to forget the author, name and all, besides, every other line in
this book is a quotation!) Have read some other chapters and I have
concluded that this sort of analysis and writing, however well
intentioned, is just as damaging to my involvement as a reader as if I
were to become one of those carnivorous students.

Have been trying to read a romance (I never use to have this category)
novel which has the cover torn off; I found it behind one of the
machines. With every word my mind is sent in spirals of thought about
where my understanding comes from, how my reading of this book will
affect everything else I read and have read and, above all, why can't I
just enjoy my books anymore?

I am depressed. I find it impossible to concentrate on reading so I
have taken to driving the van instead of working behind the counter;
Sylvain, the guy who usually does it, has swapped with me. At least the
driving takes my mind off it, I'm hoping I might forget after a
while.

I drive to people houses, drop off their clothes and collect the money.
They sometimes ask me in while they get change. I gratefully accept as
it gives me chance to scan their shelves for books, judging them on the
novels scattered on coffee tables and desks.

This is the last straw for me, I've reached an all time low. I might as
well go to university and kill off the dormant child inside me who
enjoys reading for the sake of reading.

______________________

I tried to tell them at the police station.

"It was a bit like in 'The Outsider'" I said, "you know, when he is
killing the Arab guy?"

The officers looked sceptical. I don't think they'd read it. One of
them made a note on a pad of paper.

"Monsieur Villa-Campa, you are aware that anything you say now may be
used in evidence against you?"

"Well that's why I'm telling you! The sun was shining in my eyes, it
was just like Camus. Everything was yellow, it was really hot and I was
tired. I saw a face I thought I recognised in the road in front of me
and before I had time to think I was nearly on him..."

Neither of the two officers replied. After a while a suited officer
came in and started to talk to me. He had skin like suede and deep
wrinkles that looked like seems. His thin grey hair was slippery and
flat in patches were he had been sweating.

"Monsieur Villa-Campa, I ought to tell you that we are not charging
you. All the eyewitnesses confirm that you had no time to stop before
hitting the man. Even his companions have said that he was in a
preoccupied mood and was probably not being as careful as he should
have been."

"Oh right, I see." I wasn't quite sure how to reply.

"But there is one thing I find rather unusual," the officer continued,
"the witnesses say that you didn't stop the vehicle immediately, that
you kept on driving for a few seconds after the impact, is this
true?"

"I tried to tell them, it was just like 'The Outsider'"

One of the Gendarmes attempted, without much success, to whisper in the
suited officers ear that I had talked about killing an Arab man. The
man smiled and dismissed the two officers.

"You are a literary man, Monsieur Villa-Campa?"

"Well, not really, but I've read a bit," I said.

"Have you ever heard of an author called Roland Barthes?"

_________________

It took a while to explain but the suited officer seemed content with
my story. I explained that I had indeed read a book by Roland Barthes
although I avoided telling him quite how much it had enraged me. We
talked for a while about it and then about 'The Outsider' which,
happily, he had read and so he immediately understood my ill-advised
reference to murdering Arabs. Though in honesty I wonder how much more
action would have been taken if I had said "I really did kill an Arab
today".

I'm sure I sound quite glib to you, having recently run over and killed
a man. I do feel bad, I really do, but there was something in that
moment when I saw him in the road in front of me, I think a part of me
feels no remorse. It wasn't conscious but on some level I must have
recognised him and not wanted to stop. In a way I think it's to do with
my having read 'Image - Music - Text'. It was not the theory anymore
which upset me but it is more to do with the depth of inward thought
which the book promotes and from which there can be no recovery. Once
your mind has plumbed the depths which his ideas invite you to it is
near impossible to revert to any straightforward sort of reading. For
example, without realising it, I spent so much time thinking about
Meursault while I was driving the van I ended up constructing a
behavioural model based on him; exactly the sort of externalising (that
word!) I've always tried to avoid. I know it sounds weird but I think
for that moment when I saw Roland Barthes in my headlights I adopted my
version of Meursault's character. Above all I wanted to be able to read
books in a normal way again and I suppose, if only for a split-second,
I thought that killing Roland Barthes might be the solution. Without
really thinking about it I found my foot on the accelerator not the
brake.

I haven't read anything since the accident although I am back to
working in the Launderette, Sylvain is back on van duty. Someone
dropped a huge hardback copy of a book called 'Don Quixote'. I'll try
and start reading it tomorrow.