Writing Blog Number 2

20240622 Public Consumption Of Your Work

Public Consumption Of Your Work

I read this online today and felt I had to share and put in my two cents’ worth...
         Fahrenheit 451 was not about book-burning but the danger Ray Bradbury saw that television posed to literature and reading. Yes, that is not the new thing: I knew that because I read a long essay about it written by Bradbury himself.
         He not only said that in essays, but he gave a series of lectures about it. He was very clear – TV was an issue. He’d love today’s Internet, I am sure!
         However, and this is the new info for me, people who read the book were so determined that he meant it to be about book-burning and censorship and, by extension, totalitarian governments, that he was hounded out of several lectures – most famously one at UCLA – by students and lecturers, all of whom told him he was wrong about his own book!
         Likewise, Orwell meant 1984 to be about the power of language and how it can be used for nefarious means, not censorship. Of course, he also meant Animal Farm to be about how revolutions are stupid, not how Communism was stupid (he was, after all, a Socialist). He wrote about both of these things in published letters and essays, so it’s not me making things up based on my interpretation. It’s just that, reading online, many think he was wrong about his own work.
         So, if you think you mean something when you write, be aware your audience might not only disagree but decide you're only the writer so you know nothing about what you created.
         What this boils down to is the work ceases to be yours once it is in the public sphere.
         And I can even give a personal example. There is a book called Half Days And Patched Pants, written about kids in the Port Adelaide area between the World Wars by Max Colwell. One of the characters is based on my grandfather. Well, I knew nothing of this, and as we were reading it in high school and I knew grandpa lived in the area at the time the book was set, I asked him about something the teacher said. That was when he told me he was one of the characters, and he introduced me to Max! Over the course of the term, the three of us discussed what I learnt, and so, at the end of term, with the school’s permission, I brought him to school to meet the class.
         He made a point of saying it was not meant to be depressing, but a story of hope. The teacher asked why everything was blue, then, if not depressing. Max explained it was the free paint they were given because it was surplus at the Port after painting the ship-building buildings, and the curtains were from material from the same place, then other furniture was done to match.
         My teacher told him, the author, he was wrong, and that it is a hint of underlying depression amongst the people (and the Great Depression they were living through). Max laughed in his face, and said to me, in front of the class, "People who think they know you better than you are no better than the bastards" – that got an ooh from the class of 13/14 year olds at Catholic high school – "we fought in the War."
         The teacher tried apologising, but Max left, and I went with him to see him out.
         The teacher later gave me a letter of apology to give him. I don't know if Max ever read it. He was asked to go back to the school to talk about his work, but refused. Well done, Catholic High School! However, he was still cool with me.
         And that’s why I reckon 90% of the crap we are told Shakespeare meant in his plays is also BS, just stuff said by people who talk too loudly in cafés and want to be seen as cleverer than everyone else in the room. He wrote populist fiction; if he was alive today, he would have written the entirety of the Phases 1 through 3 Marvel films, plus Blackadder (all 4 series) and probably Bridgerton (books and TV series). Oh, and a few films where everyone dies for the Cannes Film Festival as well.
         But, again, the work ceases to be yours once in the public sphere. Something to be aware of as creators, I guess.