Ong: The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction vs. Bathes: The Death of the Author

Every writer and every author is different. Although they may write similar pieces of work, no two authors or writers are ever the same. Yet, we as readers, or audience members, have come to the conclusion that the writer and the author hardly hold a purpose anymore. Throughout Roland Barthes' article, we as the audience are told that the author dies at some point in the process between the creation or idea of a novel and the completion or the end of said novel.

How can we as writers and authors interpret this in a positive light? It causes us to think, at one point to I die and at what point to I lose myself and my authorship in this piece of writing? Although to the author the benefits of writing and substantial and incomparable, the author still feels this sense of loss when a piece of writing has been completed. Whether it be the sense of loss within himself or within his novel, it is still a sense of loss none the less.

On the other hand, Walter Ong focuses on what the audience is itself, instead of what the author has or will become. Ong states that the audience; i.e., the readers of this piece of writing, are a fictional being. Although an orator may know who their chosen audience is, this does not mean that he knows every detail about every person or how they will react to the speech.

Ong says, "For writing itself is an indirection. Direct communication by script is impossible. This makes writing not less but more interesting..."

Ong, who writes about this fictional audience, argues for the fact that although we cannot have direct communication with our audience, that makes writing all the more interesting. But to who? Who gets to decide if this is more interesting if Ong himself doesn't believe in a factual audience?

Barthes says, "We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."

Barthes, who writes about this omnipresent death of the author, argues for the fact that it is merely a myth. He argues that a reader cannot be born and gain experience if the author is in fact "dead." Yet his entire argument throughout the article is that the author is dying through the experience of writing.

So what's the truth? If the author dies, at what point in the evolution of a piece of writing does this happen. If the author cannot die at the cost of the birth of the reader, for what reason must he remain alive? Furthermore, if the author doesn't know his audience or, in turn, the audience does not exist, does the death occur automatically; i.e., when the author is creating the initial idea for his piece of writing?

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 868, 874-77.

Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.

-Koral Griggs-