I can’t believe we only have one more issue to go. But I will save all the emotions for the last one.
The last few weeks have been exhausting but equally thrilling. I worked way too much and tried my best to keep my calm – almost successful. So, let me first apologise for being late with this issue. For some reason, I didn't want to send it because that meant I was nearing the end.
This issue is all text, and no extra links or visuals. For that, I am sorry. I could not have done any justice to my purpose of this issue by including a lot of links. I still have hope that you enjoy itas much as the previous ones.
Anyway, this is our penultimate issue and all I can do is request you to read every word of it as sincerely as you can. Never mind if you read it later today, or tomorrow, or next month. Whenever you read, read it with all your love for this newsletter.
Happy Reading!
“The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.”
- Roland Barthes
Last week, I read two essays that made me think and reflect too much. After deliberating a lot, I finally decided to write this issue around them.
[My desk this week was mostly these two essays and too much chai!]
When I started writing this newsletter, I always hoped people would read my work and think about me – as the author, the writer, or the curator. It's also because I practised the same thing. I would always read about the author of the book before I bought it, read about the director of a movie before I watched it, and the artist behind the painting that I decided to give my time to look at. I wanted to be ‘that’ person for anyone who would read my work as if I had created it.
But did I create everything that I had written in this newsletter? All the posts you see on Instagram, of people writing about their thoughts and their feelings, all the times you have expressed your ideas, were you someone who created them? Are there ever any original thoughts, something that hasn’t been said before already? I read ‘Death of the Author’, an essay by Roland Barthes sometime back and realised that I may never have had many ‘original ideas’. I went back to all my articles, Instagram posts, diary entries only to realise whatever I had written had somewhere been said – some research paper or news article. Else how would I have even thought about something like that? Barthes argues in his mind-blowing essay about how any piece of text is so readily attached to its writer, who hasn’t done much but curated and compiled different ideas in her text and presented to the reader in a palatable form. It does make sense because this very idea isn’t mine too, I only thought after reading the essay. I started questioning why would be appropriate for any text so much based on the writer, why do we legitimise a work of art based on the artist first?
Why should you read something and give it any meaning because I am the writer?
Humans have always grown up around symbols. We interpret almost everything around us using some kind of symbolism. Love, religion, communication – everything has a language of symbols. Language itself is a collection of symbols. These symbols actually help us interpret the message behind a text or a work of art. If I am writing about my experiences of growing up in a Muslim household in India, it might have a different impact on you than some other women, maybe a Hindu woman writing on experiences of Muslim women growing up. The credibility of both these works would be different, and that interpretation becomes much easier if we know who the person behind it is. You might think of my past, my upbringing, my experiences, my religious and political affiliation and read my articles wearing all those lenses.
Another one of my favourite essays that I have read was by Susan Sontag – 'Against Interpretation'. Sontag argues on similar lines. She talks about how any form of art has two things – content and form. Sontag mentions modernity brought with itself this very new way of looking at art where a critic focuses so much on content and interpreting what the text or art means that the consumer (the person who consumes this art) doesn’t even have enough opportunity to internalise or feel her emotions while experiencing the art.
“To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.”
― Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays
So, while we separate in a few weeks, I am sure you will be consuming a lot of content in the form of media, news, and art. While we read and experience different forms of art, here is probably how you can make your time much more useful and in pursuit of knowledge.
While reading a piece of text, don’t jump to find out the author and their relevance to the work. Yes, in some cases that might be a very important aspect, but not always. Separate the author from her work, and experience the work independently. Follow the story, the arguments, and the logic and then form your opinion. Most of us who write do not know it all. It would not be pragmatic to say we know it all.
You are the destination. Any creator makes their content for someone to receive it on the other end – that's the destination. As for me, you are my destination. The hundreds of people who might read my work will not interpret them similarly. They might learn different things and that is why the reader, you, are an active and imperative part of this journey. It is you who decides the fate of this work of art, and any other.
The importance of the author reduces and the reader increases. The author dies and the readers take birth.
Happy Birthday!
The author enters into his own death, writing begins.
- Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author