The Emergent Author: Affective Response to a Friend of a “Very Special, Artificial Kind”

An author may merely be a projection we insert into the text, but this interpretive reality does not feel so banal and ephemeral when we are doing it. Nor does it prevent us, though, however sophisticated our reading practices may be, from being influenced in our analysis by the special image we have of the person behind the pen and the feelings, warm or cool, that they excite in us.