A writer should be 'invisible'. Do you agree or disagree?

In Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' he argued that the writer has no influence on the meaning of a text, that once it has been written it is for the readers to deduce meaning, what the author may have intended no longer matters. Should we agree with Barthes' theory, once the writer has written their work, they are obsolete. The social, political and historical context of the writing no longer matters. For Barthes the writer simply writes, and that is all. If we accept this view, then they become an invisible presence, like the elves and the shoemaker. A writer appears, writes, and then disappears.
Perhaps this was easier to comprehend in a time when a writer's autonomy was possible. Now one cannot even share a flippant remark online without it being traced back to them.
Thus, today and is it nearly impossible for a writer to be truly anonymous. Book signings and tours are almost as intrinsic to the occupation of a successful writer as the process of writing itself. The author becomes a public figure, their opinion has become valued rather than disregarded. Author's faces are becoming more well-known as are as their personal stories. J. K. Rowling, John Green, Stephen King: they themselves are as well-known as their work.

Virginia Woolf once said, "every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works". The presence of a writer, I believe, will always be present in their work. And while over time it may just be a ghost of them that remains, that ghost is still visible. 

Thus, in my opinion, whether a writer should be invisible or not is irrelevant; a writer cannot be invisible. They are so intrinsically linked with the words that they have created that they will always be present within it. And the modern culture that we now live in has not changed that, but it simply makes it easier for a readership starving for the author's presence to discover them.   

Comments

  1. Sam Spam17 February 2014 at 23:28

    I like your arguement here. I agree that the celebrity culture we find ourselves in today forces people to show their faces more and chucks them into the public eye. While it may be nice to be invisible it is probably very tricky to do so.

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  2. Lisa17 February 2014 at 23:30

    I think you put forward a really good argument here. I would initially say that the writer should be invisible but then thinking about being an author and the more success that being known can bring sways me slightly towards the other side. However being known doesn't mean you have to have an agenda in your writing.

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