Death of an Author, Death of the Author

Scattered thoughts on James Tiptree, Jr., Neil Gaiman, and Separating Art From Artist

Cover for the original Japanese edition of The Starry Rift, released under the title “The Only Neat Thing to Do.” Art by Yumiko Kawahara.

I want to preface this by saying I’m only speaking for myself, and intend this more as a reflection and suggestion than a prescription. It’s certainly not the comprehensive treatise the topic deserves. There are better literary critics on Substack than me who can work on that.

Anyway.

I've been enjoying B.D. McClay's series on Neon Genesis Evangelion, and last weekend, she posted something interesting on Notes. As it turns out, the original title for episode 26 was "The Only Neat Thing to Do," a reference to a story from The Starry Rift by James Tiptree, Jr.¹ And further, it turns out this particular story is one of the most beloved science fiction stories in Japan, and is referenced throughout their pop culture.² It's especially notorious for its tagline, from a comment by its translator: if you read this and don't need a handkerchief, you're not human.³

So of course I looked it up and read it (you can use the Open Library on the Internet Archive), and it’s had me thinking the last few days about what it really means to separate the art from the artist. Because the story (to spoil something written before I learned what vowels were) ends with a double suicide, and just a few years of its publication, its author, James Tiptree, Jr. (real name Alice B. Sheldon) killed her husband and herself in an apparent suicide pact. In 2019, this became controversial enough in fandom that her name was removed from the award created in her (or at least her pseudonym's) honor.⁴

Why do I find it so easy to separate the ending of this story from Sheldon/Tiptree's actual murder-suicide, as opposed to say, separating the “Calliope” story from Sandman from the accusations against Neil Gaiman? Even the article I just linked brings it up (sorry, it’s paywalled). Is it just because I found the Tiptree story so moving? Because she used a pen name?

It's kind of sad for me to talk about Neil Gaiman this way, as he was easily one of my biggest influences as a writer for years. I'm pretty sure it was while reading Good Omens in undergrad that I thought, "Hey, I could do this." I even started using fountain pens because of him! But my attitude echoes John Scalzi--even the best case interpretation of the events in that article is pretty damning.

I actually did read Barthes' "Death of the Author" for this. On one hand, I'm highly sympathetic to Barthes’ contention that focusing too much on the author and their background can unfairly limit one’s interpretation of the story. "To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing." On the other hand, I’m also sympathetic to his critics’ contention that this information can enhance interpretation as well, and ground it. Wikipedia cites E.D. Hirsch, Jr., saying, "without grounding meaning in the author's intent, interpretation risks becoming purely subjective, making any reading equally valid, regardless of textual evidence." Which makes sense: without the author, you get "Bob's Burgers is actually set in purgatory" and "The Shining is about the moon landing."⁵

Take The Lord of the Rings. To some extent, studying The Lord of the Rings is in large part about studying Tolkien himself. If I want to understand how and why the story works, it helps to understand the author, and fortunately, Tolkien was a fascinating enough person, with a unique enough approach to storytelling. Just the other day, as I was writing a draft of this post, a friend texted me to say how the Gerasene demoniac in Mark’s gospel reminded him of Tolkien’s description of Gollum—given Tolkien’s Catholicism, that’s entirely plausible.

In the same way, it’s hard to imagine talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion without talking about Hideaki Anno. There are many facets one can explore:

• The influence of the God Warrior scene from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind on both the Evas and the Angels, given Anno was the animator for that scene.⁶

• The influence of series like Ultraman, Gundam, Space Runaway Ideon, and other series, given that Anno is such a colossal nerd that at least two people have written manga about what a colossal nerd he is, including his wife.⁷

• Anno's own struggles with depression, and how that affects the tone and the philosophical and psychoanalytic aspects of the series. This is especially apparent with the Rebuild series, where Anno's depression delayed the fourth installment for several years.

But then, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In fact, I doubt most people who watch any version of Evangelion are going to know one thing about Anno. This is all meta-knowledge. It's the diehard weirdo fans like me who dig into his background like this. The series gives most viewers enough to chew on without having to bring in any info about Anno. So does Lord of the Rings. If they didn't, there'd be little reason to look at the creators at all.⁸ Not to mention that sometimes people get the authors wrong. I personally have a hard time believing that Anno wrote Eva as a critique or condemnation of otaku, as some YouTubers and essayists have claimed.

Part of the issue, as I see it, goes back to Barthes' contention that the emphasis on the Author places a limit on the interpretation. As we saw above, knowing a little about Tolkien was able to expand an understanding of not only his work, but the Bible itself. It also illumines his approach to worldbuilding, his writing style,⁹ and the values the story expresses. If you look into Anno, suddenly the entire history of Japanese animation is opening up to you.

In the case of "The Only Neat Thing to Do," knowing how Tiptree/Sheldon chose to end her and her husband's lives does shine a certain light on her story, but I don't feel like it closes off other angles for analysis. As the article above pointed out, one of the main reasons it resonates with Japanese readers is because of its depiction of friendship between girls. This made me wonder if Japanese readers form a connection with Anne of Green Gables, which is especially beloved in Japan¹⁰. The protagonist, Coati, is rather Anne Shirley-ish herself. As I read the story, Coati and her symbiotic friend Syllobene's conversations, both using the same vocal cords, reminded me of a rakugo performance, where each character is played by the same person.¹¹ So perhaps Japanese readers also feel like they're seeing their own culture reflected in this story, one Western readers wouldn't notice.

The allegations against Gaiman, on the other hand, do seem to set a limit on "Calliope." If you weren't aware of them, you could have plausibly read it as a semi-feminist story about a man getting his comeuppance for victimizing a woman. Once you do become aware, it doesn't make that reading impossible. It doesn't even mean it might not have been the author's intent--human beings are notoriously complicated. But it does sort of tweak the odds. If anything, the allegations threaten to make the story too biographical. Where before, the story was more open to interpretation, now it's incredibly easy to map it onto what we now know/suspect about Neil Gaiman. It doesn't just make the story more unpleasant (and it was unpleasant to begin with), it makes it less interesting. It's one-dimensional.

And, of course, sometimes I just don't want to get into somebody's head. This would be a major reason I have little interest in reading Marion Zimmer Bradley. I'll never say never, but it'll be a long time before her work becomes a priority.

I think the central question is really, what is our purpose in reading a book? After all, there's a reason that works from the past still find relevance today. Do people keep reading Jane Austen because she herself is such an interesting person, or because they find her stories resonate with something in their own lives? Who am I to utterly deny a possible interpretation, if it can be supported by the text?

The Vulture article actually made me interested in rereading The Ocean at the End of the Lane at some point. Partly because I've forgotten nearly everything about it; partly because, knowing it's semi-autobiographical, I now have a new lens through which to view it: namely, Scientology. I even just read Lawrence Wright's Going Clear because of it. So whereas I'm not really sure what I'll get out of Neil Gaiman's other work from here on, Ocean looks like it has something fresh to sink my teeth into.

St. Basil the Great himself dealt with this question in the fourth century, when he taught young Christians how to read pagan literature.

Now, then, altogether after the manner of bees must we use these writings, for the bees do not visit all the flowers without discrimination, nor indeed do they seek to carry away entire those upon which they light, but rather, having taken so much as is adapted to their needs, they let the rest go. So we, if wise, shall take from heathen books whatever befits us and is allied to the truth, and shall pass over the rest. And just as in culling roses we avoid the thorns, from such writings as these we will gather everything useful, and guard against the noxious.

For example, obviously Homer never intended any Christian message in the Odyssey, but that didn't mean Christians have nothing to learn from him. We can take what’s useful (depictions of virtue, courage, wisdom), and leave what isn’t (worshipping Zeus). And I tend to think that’s the healthiest attitude to take. Some readers may have less they can imagine they can take from an author who's done something terrible; some have more. I can’t begrudge that. It’s up to the individual.

I, for one, see Tiptree's story as making an interesting statement about self-control and the need for proper education. Who knows if that's what she intended, but whatever, it's there.

Thoughts?

1. The on-air version is named "The Beast that Shouted 'I' at the Heart of the World," after a different science fiction story. It's a pun--"I" is how you pronounce "愛" the Japanese word for love, which of course would be the word in the original title.

2. Fair warning: there are links to a hentai site in there, but on the bright side, they appear to be broken.

3. Pretty sure I am.

4. I personally believe this was a mistake. Looking at the award committee's statements, their final decision strikes me as cowardly in the face of online backlash. And I probably judge Sheldon's actions even more harshly than anyone who was actually involved. Also, to me it seems telling that they still say "formerly the Tiptree Award" six years later, just like how every article about X (formerly Twitter) says "X (formerly Twitter)."

5. I mean, more power to ya if that's how you see it, and if you actually have textual evidence. Just be careful with that.

6. In fact, just today I read on ANN that Miyazaki “would be open to a hypothetical Nausicaä film sequel — if Anno would do it.”

7. I'm serious: look up Insufficient Direction by Moyoco Anno. There's also the recent manga Beat and Motion, which begins with what I'm fairly confident is a reference to Anno's appearance on a 90's TV show where famous people visit their old classrooms.

8. The Ed Woods and Tommy Wiseaus of the world notwithstanding. It's different when the failure itself is interesting.

9. If anything, we don't talk enough about Tolkien as a stylist. The man is able to shift from colloquial dialect to elevated heroic dialect to Biblical poetry, all in one narrative. Not just anybody can do that.

10. Which has both inspired and been a plot point in anime. Isao Takahata directed an Anne of Green Gables TV series for World Masterpiece Theater in 1979, and there's a new series coming out this year, Anne Shirley, inspired by the original's art style. It's also turned up as a plot point in R.O.D. the TV.

11. Based on how it's depicted in the manga Akane-banashi, you could think of it as the traditional Japanese one-man-show.