I love that Dictionary of the Khazars already came up on this issue. To those that say that authors simply try to represent the way things are, I'd like to point out that novels and stories are not simply innocent reflections of a "real" world, but very much a part of reality: e.g. how we configure, define and explain ourselves--how we grant definition to the world, so there is nothing innocent about the power of stories.
Another interesting example is Italo Calvino's "If On a Winter's Night a traveler", which is written in second person--meaning it begin with 'you the reader, just opened a book by Italo Calvino). It follows the reader's attempt to read the novel, which is continuously interrupted by new narratives intruding and breaking the flow of the prior chapters.
But even there Calvino can't avoid being an author tyrant--"the reader" starts just being "you", no matter who you are. But a few chapters in "you" quickly becomes defined as a male, of a certain age, of a certain financial and social status etc.
It is not a matter of bad writing--a good writer has as much trouble with this matter as a bad one (bad writers don't tend to view it as a problem)
An example where the inevitable authorial voice is subverted by skillful maneuvering by the author is V. Nabokov's "Pale Fire"
Nabokov wrote Pale Fire immediately after writing a critical analysis of the great Russian poet Pushkin's, great epic love poem "Eugene Onegin". Unfortunately Nabokov's analysis kept veering away from Pushkin and into Nabakov's utterly unrelated recollections of the Russia he lost forever.
"Pale Fire" was a kind of self-parody. The narrator is a Russian immigrant, a writer putting together an elaborate critical account of a poem written by his friend, a fellow professor at an american university. From the narrator's account it seems that the poem (which we don't get to read until the middle of the book) is entirely about Russia, the revolution, emigration etc.
When you actually get to the analyzed poem, it becomes obvious that the narrator is wrong, and that the poem is very much about the poet's daughter's suicide. Indeed there is only a single line about Russia (called "Zembla" in the novel) and it is an ironic off-hand at best.
It also becomes clear that the narrator is insane, believing himself to be the deposed king of russia, hunted by assassins.
And all of the above gets subverted at the end.
Basically, the "death of the author" (and how to accomplish it as an author) is one of the great literary questions of our time.
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Topic: Reducing the Omnipotence of Writers (Read 4046 times)