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The Idle Book Club 2: Cloud Atlas

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The Idle Book Club Episode 2:

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Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Chris and Sean heap praise upon the masterful David Mitchell, revel in their favorite passages of the book, and ponder the importance (or lack thereof) of authorial intent. Also Sean watches a film trailer and wishes he hadn't.

Missed this month and want to catch up?

Looking to discuss next month's book?

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I'm about three quarters through and am hooked. It took till the 4th perspective for me to get into it. The over-arching narrative hadn't really peeked through until then, and the third perspective read like a bad mystery novel (intentionally I guess). But now I can't wait to get the pay-off for each story. Just finished the closing section of Sonmi and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I guess it doesn't have as much of a philosophical bent as The Sense of an Ending. I am more thinking about the plot and characters than I am about any human experience questions that might be raised by the narrative. Maybe something else will come up as I get closer to the end, but so far it all seems to be about the story and the connections between the stories.

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I'm about three quarters through and am hooked. It took till the 4th perspective for me to get into it. The over-arching narrative hadn't really peeked through until then, and the third perspective read like a bad mystery novel (intentionally I guess). But now I can't wait to get the pay-off for each story. Just finished the closing section of Sonmi and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I guess it doesn't have as much of a philosophical bent as The Sense of an Ending. I am more thinking about the plot and characters than I am about any human experience questions that might be raised by the narrative. Maybe something else will come up as I get closer to the end, but so far it all seems to be about the story and the connections between the stories.

In general I think Mitchell's biggest strength is his ability to inhabit a character and give it a voice. That's definitely the biggest joy of Cloud Atlas for me.

It's definitely true that, especially being such a sprawling novel, Cloud Atlas doesn't have such particular questions to raise as The Sense of an ending; but in the aggregate I think it does meditate considerably on the nature of humanity. It just does it more through the totality of the thing (particularly in the second half) than through the close interrogation of individual memories.

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In general I think Mitchell's biggest strength is his ability to inhabit a character and give it a voice. That's definitely the biggest joy of Cloud Atlas for me.

It's definitely true that, especially being such a sprawling novel, Cloud Atlas doesn't have such particular questions to raise as The Sense of an ending; but in the aggregate I think it does meditate considerably on the nature of humanity. It just does it more through the totality of the thing (particularly in the second half) than through the close interrogation of individual memories.

Yeah, the strong sense of intertextuality between the different vignettes of the novel, literally as well as thematically, to give a fairly stirring picture about the freedom and resilience of knowledge against the caprices of the humans that create it. I was reading this during my medieval exams, as well as while playing through the unbelievably excellent Analogue: A Hate Story, both of which Mitchell's implicit and explicit commentary on information culture resonated with.

Does anyone want to talk about the comet-birthmark thing? I personally found that the most fictional of the various little touches.

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Yeah, the strong sense of intertextuality between the different vignettes of the novel, literally as well as thematically, to give a fairly stirring picture about the freedom and resilience of knowledge against the caprices of the humans that create it. I was reading this during my medieval exams, as well as while playing through the unbelievably excellent Analogue: A Hate Story, both of which Mitchell's implicit and explicit commentary on information culture resonated with.

Does anyone want to talk about the comet-birthmark thing? I personally found that the most fictional of the various little touches.

I almost feel that while the resilience of knowledge plays a part, equally important is sort of the resilience of narrative, of storytelling as a sort of essential and immutable human experience. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are some definite points within the book where the previous vignette, as it gets passed forward, a lot of the meaning gets stripped away, and in many cases the authenticity of the previous vignette as "real" is thrown into serious doubt. Even so, the audience of the vignette is as enthralled as we were, captured by a narrative they may neither believe nor fully understand.

I'm not sure how I feel about the comet birthmark. When I was reading the book, I kind of revelled in the more explicit threads between the stories as points that made the book less of just a anthology of thematically similar tales. Now, looking back, I remember the sort of thematic unfolding and building upon for each story better than those explicit ties, and could almost do without a spotlight so bright as those comet birthmarks.

I did appreciate however the interplay between the idea that each story was possibly even fictional within the universe of the book, and the existence of the birthmark.

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I'm not sure how I feel about the comet birthmark. When I was reading the book, I kind of revelled in the greater explicit threads between the stories as points that made the book less of just a anthology of thematically similar tales. Now, looking back, I remember the sort of thematic unfolding and building upon for each story better than those explicit ties, and could almost do without a spotlight so bright as those comet birthmarks.

I definitely agree with this. I'm reading it a second time for the cast, and I find those elements more off-putting to me this time around.

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Haven't read it yet, my copy arrives on the 22nd of this month. After listening to the Bookcast I went and ordered it. Sorry, didn't use the link supplied but will do so for all future bookcasts!

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I definitely agree with this. I'm reading it a second time for the cast, and I find those elements more off-putting to me this time around.

From what I gathered from the trailer it seems that these elements will be much more present in the movie, for example Timothy Cavendish says he dreamed about a restaurant where the waitresses all looked the same (--> Papa Song). I didn’t mind that in the book, because it was very subtle, it was only mentioned in a few instances (birthmark, Luisa knowing the Cloud Atlas Sextet). On one hand, the movie seems to be really great, but on the other hand, the story appears to be more about the connection between the protagonists, so hmm.

I’m in the second to last chapter, I’ll write my impression about the book as a whole when I’m done.

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From what I gathered from the trailer it seems that these elements will be much more present in the movie, for example Timothy Cavendish says he dreamed about a restaurant where the waitresses all looked the same (--> Papa Song). I didn’t mind that in the book, because it was very subtle, it was only mentioned in a few instances (birthmark, Luisa knowing the Cloud Atlas Sextet). On one hand, the movie seems to be really great, but on the other hand, the story appears to be more about the connection between the protagonists, so hmm.

I’m in the second to last chapter, I’ll write my impression about the book as a whole when I’m done.

The movie also seems to explicitly

portray multiple characters with the same actor

, which I find really lame.

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The movie also seems to explicitly

portray multiple characters with the same actor

, which I find really lame.

At first I thought this was a great idea, but now I think it’s rather lame, too. Especially since the reason they do this seems to be that they want to show that the

characters in all six storylines are basically reincarnations, not only the protagonist.

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I stumbled on a picture of Tom Hanks as Dermot Hoggins a few days ago, man does he look silly.

Cloud-Atlas_Dermot-Hoggins_001.jpg

I just have so many misgivings about the movie myself. It seems like it's going to prefer literal over thematic interconnections, probably because film does those better, but what film doesn't do well is convey intertextuality and the unreliability of narrative. If it happens onscreen in a movie, it's assumed to have happened in reality, unless the audience is given wavy lines or or a blurry lens to inform otherwise. There's less consciousness of a story being a story first and anything else second.

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As far as the movie, I think this review says everything that I need to know:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/tiff-review-cloud-atlas-is-bold-messy-disappointingly-unimaginative-20120908

In general I think Mitchell's biggest strength is his ability to inhabit a character and give it a voice. That's definitely the biggest joy of Cloud Atlas for me.

It's definitely true that, especially being such a sprawling novel, Cloud Atlas doesn't have such particular questions to raise as The Sense of an ending; but in the aggregate I think it does meditate considerably on the nature of humanity. It just does it more through the totality of the thing (particularly in the second half) than through the close interrogation of individual memories.

I don't know, when I finished the book, it made me appreciate more what Mitchell was trying to do in each individual narrative. Each story explores the various ways in which humans enslave each other, and how 'slavery' goes through cycles before it reverts back to its most basic form: compare the slavery in the Ewing section to the slavery in the post-Apocalyptic story.

Mitchell is really intentional with the way he structures the book. First the stories are ascending through time and then they start to descend until we're back at the beginning. It's at the beginning (or what is really the 'end' of the book) where Mitchell directly states the message behind the whole book:

Ewing has his revelation about the evils of slavery and decides to become in abolitionist. Because this comes at the end of the novel, but in what is really the earliest time period, I think we're meant to see Ewing's epiphany as a reversal of all the events that come after his. Ewing broke free of his era's slavery model, which causes a ripple effect throughout time (he's one drop in an ocean that's made of many drops) and possibly leads to a better future than what Jacob gets in the post-Apocalyptic story. All of this fits with the heavy references to reincarnation in the book as well.

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One criticism I have with the book's structure

I always interpreted it that each character was just tied through chance to the others, not that they were reincarnations. That's just how I read it, and it makes the ending a bit more poignant - that it's every human's ability and responsibility to do well by themselves and others. Otherwise, it just pertains to the one soul who is being reincarnated.

However, this is completely wrong as Mitchell has explicitly stated "Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark'.

Oh well.

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One criticism I have with the book's structure

I always interpreted it that each character was just tied through chance to the others, not that they were reincarnations. That's just how I read it, and it makes the ending a bit more poignant - that it's every human's ability and responsibility to do well by themselves and others. Otherwise, it just pertains to the one soul who is being reincarnated.

However, this is completely wrong as Mitchell has explicitly stated "Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark'.

Oh well.

Agreed.

Resorting to mysticism and the supernatural undermines so much of what makes that theme otherwise compelling.

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Just finished. It might be my genre-fiction roots, but I think Sonmi and Zachry together are my favorite parts of the whole book.

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One criticism I have with the book's structure

I always interpreted it that each character was just tied through chance to the others, not that they were reincarnations. That's just how I read it, and it makes the ending a bit more poignant - that it's every human's ability and responsibility to do well by themselves and others. Otherwise, it just pertains to the one soul who is being reincarnated.

However, this is completely wrong as Mitchell has explicitly stated "Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark'.

Oh well.

I'm a firm believer in the "Death of the Author" school of thought, though. Once the author finishes a work and hands it to the public, it's no longer his. The work stands alone is must be allowed to speak for itself. The author can later say what they intended (an impulse I understand, but which I always find a little disappointing) but in the long run all audience interpretations of the work are as equally as valid as the author's.

So I think your initial reading is totally valid, and personally, a much more interesting way to view the book. It's sad that Mitchell (perhaps due to constant badgering from the press) isn't content to leave the issue of interconnectedness as open-ended as the book does, but I think that open-endedness is what makes the book so compelling. Like you said, without concrete reincarnation, the book as whole reflects more upon humanity and it's struggles with it's more oppressive and destructive nature, rather than a choice string of one-off episodes cherry-picked by supernatural whim.

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I am currently about half way through the book and Sloosha's Crossin' chapter

Looking at the chapter breakdown the book is mirrored round the Sloosha's Crossin' story which is the only one that is a single chapter and looking at my kindle seems to be the longest. I wonder does this chapter change your view of the other stories or will reading all the stories in reverse in the second half do so ?

This book reminds me of Ulysses (which I am even so slowly making my way through) in that Mitchell is switching between different writing styles and genres from chapter to chapter. Unlike Ulysses each chapter has a lot more plot/ momentum to so which is why I can read more than a few pages at a time. I found the each chapter up until Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After I read in greater and greater chunks

I found the Pacific Jorunal to be the slowest to get through and I wonder is that because it is a a journal and it is observation of a man meant only to be read by himself while the letters are meant to be read by another (with soap story elements), half life is a thriller/ mystery novel which and Sonmi is an interview. Cavendish doesn't fall into either camps. My favorite chapter was Sonmi possibly because I read a lot of sci-fi and am really interested in all the ethical questions surronding AI.

[spoilerI like how each chapter throws doubt about the truth of the others like

]finding out the Doctor is poisoning Adam, Sixsmith and the letter writer being lovers or Half life coming across as a badly written thriller/mystery

quote name='The Argobot' timestamp='1347922343' post='205527']

I don't know, when I finished the book, it made me appreciate more what Mitchell was trying to do in each individual narrative. Each story explores the various ways in which humans enslave each other, and how 'slavery' goes through cycles before it reverts back to its most basic form: compare the slavery in the Ewing section to the slavery in the post-Apocalyptic story.

Mitchell is really intentional with the way he structures the book. First the stories are ascending through time and then they start to descend until we're back at the beginning. It's at the beginning (or what is really the 'end' of the book) where Mitchell directly states the message behind the whole book:

Ewing has his revelation about the evils of slavery and decides to become in abolitionist. Because this comes at the end of the novel, but in what is really the earliest time period, I think we're meant to see Ewing's epiphany as a reversal of all the events that come after his. Ewing broke free of his era's slavery model, which causes a ripple effect throughout time (he's one drop in an ocean that's made of many drops) and possibly leads to a better future than what Jacob gets in the post-Apocalyptic story. All of this fits with the heavy references to reincarnation in the book as well.

I never thought about that but it does clearly connect Adam and Sonmi. Half-life, letters and Cavendish all deal with people involved in information and storytelling which deal with the idea of the role of storytelling and how information is lost and found/ viewed differently by subsequent eras (like Sonmi being worshipped as a god)

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As far as the movie, I think this review says everything that I need to know:

http://blogs.indiewi...native-20120908

I thought the same thing as the reviewer when I saw the action scenes with Sonmi~451, it just looked like standard Sci-Fi, which doesn’t have to be bad, but I definitely don’t want that in this film.

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I'm a firm believer in the "Death of the Author" school of thought, though. Once the author finishes a work and hands it to the public, it's no longer his. The work stands alone is must be allowed to speak for itself. The author can later say what they intended (an impulse I understand, but which I always find a little disappointing) but in the long run all audience interpretations of the work are as equally as valid as the author's.

So I think your initial reading is totally valid, and personally, a much more interesting way to view the book. It's sad that Mitchell (perhaps due to constant badgering from the press) isn't content to leave the issue of interconnectedness as open-ended as the book does, but I think that open-endedness is what makes the book so compelling. Like you said, without concrete reincarnation, the book as whole reflects more upon humanity and it's struggles with it's more oppressive and destructive nature, rather than a choice string of one-off episodes cherry-picked by supernatural whim.

Not to attack you, but more a rant on the 'death of the author':

I am STAUNCHLY opposed to the idea of the "Death of the Author". The idea that because I interpreted the book differently meaning my interpretation is just as valid as what the book is 'supposed' to be, doesn't sit with me. Mitchell wrote what he wrote, he wrote it for a reason, and he constructed it purposefully - something that turned into a criticism of the work through my misinterpretation. That is, just because it might make the book work better, doesn't mean it's right. It drives me crazy when people apply it to works whose sole purpose is to convey a specific and direct message. There's not really room to interpret the message in Cormac McCarthy, Dostoevsky, David MItchell, Homer, Aristophanes, Virgil, Livy, Thucydides (just to name a bunch of authors I'm the most familiar with and would be able to argue should anyone disagree). It's not just books either - Bioshock, Breaking Bad, Alien. Each of these authors/works has a very specific purpose in mind and just because you don't like it, don't catch it, or find another interpretation you're able to shoehorn into (a strong way to put it, but it conveys what I mean) the work doesn't mean it's just as valid as what the author actually says.

I think this is definitely something the cast should address (if it hasn't already - I haven't listened to the first one yet). I'd especially like to hear Sean's as the writer on Walking Dead - where the audience is 'writing' their own story.

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Not to attack you, but more a rant on the 'death of the author':

I am STAUNCHLY opposed to the idea of the "Death of the Author". The idea that because I interpreted the book differently meaning my interpretation is just as valid as what the book is 'supposed' to be, doesn't sit with me. Mitchell wrote what he wrote, he wrote it for a reason, and he constructed it purposefully - something that turned into a criticism of the work through my misinterpretation. That is, just because it might make the book work better, doesn't mean it's right. It drives me crazy when people apply it to works whose sole purpose is to convey a specific and direct message. There's not really room to interpret the message in Cormac McCarthy, Dostoevsky, David MItchell, Homer, Aristophanes, Virgil, Livy, Thucydides (just to name a bunch of authors I'm the most familiar with and would be able to argue should anyone disagree). It's not just books either - Bioshock, Breaking Bad, Alien. Each of these authors/works has a very specific purpose in mind and just because you don't like it, don't catch it, or find another interpretation you're able to shoehorn into (a strong way to put it, but it conveys what I mean) the work doesn't mean it's just as valid as what the author actually says.

I think this is definitely something the cast should address (if it hasn't already - I haven't listened to the first one yet). I'd especially like to hear Sean's as the writer on Walking Dead - where the audience is 'writing' their own story.

I have nothing to add, but this encapsulates my thoughts on art in general pretty well. Thanks!

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Not to attack you, but more a rant on the 'death of the author':

I am STAUNCHLY opposed to the idea of the "Death of the Author". The idea that because I interpreted the book differently meaning my interpretation is just as valid as what the book is 'supposed' to be, doesn't sit with me. Mitchell wrote what he wrote, he wrote it for a reason, and he constructed it purposefully - something that turned into a criticism of the work through my misinterpretation. That is, just because it might make the book work better, doesn't mean it's right. It drives me crazy when people apply it to works whose sole purpose is to convey a specific and direct message. There's not really room to interpret the message in Cormac McCarthy, Dostoevsky, David MItchell, Homer, Aristophanes, Virgil, Livy, Thucydides (just to name a bunch of authors I'm the most familiar with and would be able to argue should anyone disagree). It's not just books either - Bioshock, Breaking Bad, Alien. Each of these authors/works has a very specific purpose in mind and just because you don't like it, don't catch it, or find another interpretation you're able to shoehorn into (a strong way to put it, but it conveys what I mean) the work doesn't mean it's just as valid as what the author actually says.

I think this is definitely something the cast should address (if it hasn't already - I haven't listened to the first one yet). I'd especially like to hear Sean's as the writer on Walking Dead - where the audience is 'writing' their own story.

I don't know, I think there's some merit to whole death-to-the-author idea. Not that I think you should completely remove the author's intentions when you're interpreting a book, but the thing is, we can never truly know what the author's intent was. Sure, Mitchell can say all that he wants in interviews, but is what he's saying actually lining up with what he's original intention was when he wrote about the comet birthmark? Who knows?

DFW had a lot of interesting things to say about death-to-the-author/intentional fallacy/all those other fancy literary theories, so I think I'll defer to him:

“once I’m done with the thing, I’m basically dead, and probably the text’s dead; it becomes simply language, and language lives not just in but “through” the reader. The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes”

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Hemingway insisted up to his death that his novels were just stories, with no greater meaning. Does that mean we should stop studying them, since the author's had his say?

I can understand a viewpoint that accords a sort of primus inter pares status to the author's opinions of their own work, but overall I find it a shockingly narrow definition of art that confines itself to the conscious intentions of a single individual, however central to the process of composition. The audience is a participant in any work, though more obviously in certain mediums like video games, and if I find a work inspiring or meaningful in a certain way, who is the author to tell me that I'm wrong? I'm the one experiencing their work, an event totally removed from whatever the author might have had in mind when creating it.

You'd think that George Lucas and Ridley Scott would have taught people by now that the author, however influential or learned, is just one among many in the collaborative effort that is the creation and interpretation of a work. The merit and meaning of the latter exist outside and separate from them, at least in part. Even more authoritative figures like Thucydides, Aristophanes, Virgil, and Livy can be analyzed in ways they would have found foreign and even abhorrent, yet give us crucial insight into them and their culture, of which they appear to have been more or less unaware.

Sorry, I hate people going off on Barthes like he's proposing intellectual anarchy. If the Thumbs crew wants to spend their time rolling into walls in Army of Two or laughing at out-of-date technofetishism in The Wizard, their enjoyment isn't somehow less valid because it wasn't the creator's intention. There's no "right" way to read a book, watch a movie, or play a game.

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The structure of the chapters breaks down in the middle. Up until that point each subsequent viewpoint has a character which experiences the previous viewpoint in 2 parts. But when we get to Zachry, he doesn't understand Sonmi's language, and on top of that he doesn't hear her story in 2 parts.

This has repercussions to the Sonmi section as well, because no-one in the higher section experiences her story in 2 parts, the split in her story is artificial instead of based on the next piece of narrative. For example, the split in the Cavendish story is due to Sonmi seeing only part of the movie, and being interrupted, then seeing the rest before she dies. Whereas the split in the Sonmi story is not explained as Zachry or Meronym experiencing her story in 2 parts.

This isn't really a criticism, I'm just trying to work through for myself whether this matters in some way. I guess the way I see it, this hints that splitting each story into 2 parts is just a storytelling device used by Mitchell and isn't meant to actually convey any meaning to the world.

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The structure of the chapters breaks down in the middle. Up until that point each subsequent viewpoint has a character which experiences the previous viewpoint in 2 parts. But when we get to Zachry, he doesn't understand Sonmi's language, and on top of that he doesn't hear her story in 2 parts.

This has repercussions to the Sonmi section as well, because no-one in the higher section experiences her story in 2 parts, the split in her story is artificial instead of based on the next piece of narrative. For example, the split in the Cavendish story is due to Sonmi seeing only part of the movie, and being interrupted, then seeing the rest before she dies. Whereas the split in the Sonmi story is not explained as Zachry or Meronym experiencing her story in 2 parts.

This isn't really a criticism, I'm just trying to work through for myself whether this matters in some way. I guess the way I see it, this hints that splitting each story into 2 parts is just a storytelling device used by Mitchell and isn't meant to actually convey any meaning to the world.

Maybe because the chain is broken? The interconnected series of narratives reaches someone who is unable to understand them and pass them on, despite having heard the whole thing, so we devolve back to the beginning.

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About the 'Death Of the Author' I think there's a crucial difference between 1) what the author meant, 2) what the reader gets and 3) what the oeuvre tells in the context of its creation.

For the first part, I feel one needs to respect the author's intent: if he meant to leave his oeuvre open for interpretation, then any coherent interpretations that are bolstered by evidence from the oeuvre's content can be identified as the author's intent (see, if I'm not mistaken, 30 Flight of Loving).

But if the author meant to convey one thing or a finite set of things only, they you have to respect that what he meant was deterministic; even if he fails to convey it.

This doesn't deny the reader's subjective experience of the oeuvre (point 2), which yields a vision that can be coherent and valuable even if not in synch with the author's intent. But it would be misplaced to qualify it as a valid interpretation and promote it as the author true intent: if the author say it's invalid, then it is.

Those two vantage points are perpendicular to the act of analyzing the oeuvre in the context of its creation. From this angle, you are allowed to study subconscious processes, undetected influences or knowledge that could have influenced the author during the creation.

For instance, Victor Hugo had a clear political agenda when writing Germinal - but the way he came to writer about miners and what was the source of his information definitely gives insight into how writing Germinal positioned him in the society of his times; and what were the reason he took this particular stances.

Similar analysis can be done on, say, latent racism or allegories in Lord of the Rings: Tolkien has repeated over and over that he didn't put those in his books, but inferring from the life of the author and from his circle of collaborators, it isn't far fetched to say that those elements might have introduced themselves despite the author's intent.

This sort of exercises provide another layer of understanding of an oeuvre but, I feel, can never negate the author intent.

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