The orators "embrace the space" in a sense and can engage with their audience directly and feel the emotion coming off of the room. There are things that the orator can be aware of, like the lighting of the room, how many people, hand gestures, presentations, etc. These are the tools of a speaker and a speaker who has direct contact made available; which a writer does not.
Like orators, writers can recognize the things they need to be aware of to invoke their audience. They are not in the same room as their readers, so the writers need to be in a state of a mind that reveals how well their work will appeal. Unlike orators, the writer's audience are readers which is plural (11). The "audience" to speakers is a collective noun. An interesting question to put into one's mind: if a man/woman read a book aloud to a crowd of people in a room, what would you call the people in the room? What would you call the speaker reading the book to the audience?
Ong brings an interesting point about Faulkner. His style embraced the notion that his writing is not for everyone and that "Faulkner demands more skilled and daring readers" (14). So, as stated above the writer has a specific audience, and thus there are expectations. A speaker cannot recognize his audience in the same way, nor can a writer react to the audience. There is room for adaptation with a speaker amongst a crowd versus something that is made set in stone (and some people will like it and some will not).
Ong spends as much time writing about the audience just as much as the speaker/writer. "The reader had to be reminded (and the narrator, too) that the recipient of the story was indeed a reader, not a listener, not one of the crowd, but an individual isolated with a text" (17). This sets it clear that there is a line between a listener and a reader; and one must recognize this on both fronts.
Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.
I find it interesting in how compare an orator to a writer and distinguish their relationship to their audience. Speakers have more immediate power can take action directly when performing in front of an audience being able to adapt accordingly to improve their speech. Writers' can only as much guess or precipitate what their audience will be like but perhaps those are a poor choice of words because a speaker acts out in front of an audience and authors target a specific "reader". That's an interesting notion to highlight because it brings into question just how deep is this introspection into the mind of the reader that writer tries to pander to or rather anticipate. It's the writers ultimate decision to alienate a specific kind of reader or to embrace them. The speaker doesn't have so much power in being able to target like that. Their audience is whoever's ears their words will fall upon. There is most definitely a clear distinction between the role of a reader and a listener, a reader is certainly more active for one in ways in which a listener cannot attain.
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