good breast bad breast

by uzwi

Elements of an audience reject the majority of the work, then, on the basis of a wilful misreading of something written half a century ago, publicly rebuild its author into the symbol they prefer. This move is acceptable, perhaps, in the case of a single reader & a single book. A book is published: an act which opens it to the traditional combination of ideological cherry-picking and emotional misprision that encourages appropriation. Some readers quite literally make a book their own, treating it as part of their deep psychic contents as if every page has originated there prior to reading. Their reading seems to them to precede their reading. Authors are used to that. Harder to come to terms with is the very strong romantic who–able to manage neither their demon nor their own boundaries, and determined not to feel in hock to the wrong writer, now a haunting dimly but irritatingly perceived behind every turn of the appropriated text–is forced to reinvent not just the book but the author. In this supernatural scenario, the author becomes a figure of moral failure: someone who went wrong; someone who wrote one correct book but subsequently–perhaps in search of adventure, more probably out of weakness–took a wrong turn, made a fatal error, and spoiled all the rest. As a result, unforgiveably, the reader’s career in appropriative revision was equally spoilt, so that they are now forced to make a powerful corrective in the form of an internet review.

Advertisement