(A study for my upcoming book Narrative Madness.)
I know a very talented individual who adapts literary works, produces and directs them, designs staging, lighting and costumes, casts the characters, plays every last one of them and sometimes adds music and special effects. This whirlwind artist accomplishes all this effortlessly, while sitting around the house in underwear and a t-shirt. That genius, my friend, is you!
When a writer walks away from a text, she vanishes. Roland Barthes calls this “The death of the author.” The death of the author, however, is the birth of the reader! So, let me be the first to congratulate you as you step in for the author and rewrite everything, animate the work and perform the text. A piece of writing, like a music score, is a set of mute symbols until it is played. Only then does it come alive.
To demonstrate your astonishing talents, I carried out an informal experiment. My instructions were simple: “As you read the following story, try to hold the image of it in your mind.” Then I offered a very short, emotionally-charged story which lacked specifics, the assumption being that the reader would fill in the details: “A man and woman are eating in a restaurant. They are talking, laughing, even arguing a little. Finally, when the conversation lags, the woman whispers, ‘I love you.’ The man throws his drink in her face and storms out of the restaurant.”
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