I took issue, slightly, with the following:

“While literary academicians and fiction writers are often wary of each other, one point on which both camps can agree is to be suspicious of anyone who talks about the needs of readers” (39).

As a fiction reader, I found this statement troublesome. True, LeFevre was writing this in 1987, but even then I think literary trends in contemporary fiction have moved beyond the romance of the isolated writer. In fact, I think that most contemporary writers work against traditional notions: the epiphany, perfect closure, stable symbols, etc. We all know, to cite Barthes, that the author is dead.

LeFevre is right that when the fiction writer composes, she does try to tune out the social. But this does not mean that the fiction writer believes that she can place herself outside the social. Rather, it’s a mask of convenience to wear. I’m not sure how many writers would like to follow Trollope—whom LeFevre commends—and make it their duty to “’make himself pleasant’ by making [. . .] meaning available to readers” (39).

I also admired, yet found troublesome, LeFevre’s comments about how books are attributed to single authors, especially when LeFevre’s own text bears her name, and I see no film-like credits page where she produces a long list of people who helped produce “her” text. All this begs a question: yes, texts are not made by individuals, but social participation in textual production is not equal. Only later in the book, in the very useful chapter five, does LeFevre begin to acknowledge that individuals do wield visionary power: “Because an individual learns language from others, her thought is to some extent connected with her social heritage; yet because she herself produces language and can make something new with it, she also makes an individual and unique contribution” (117). In truth, I think it would be cool to see a movie-like credits page (or pages) that comes right after the title. Rather than having an “Acknowledgments” section, where the writer may not mention that many people, there could be a long credits page where everyone from the editor to the guy who ran to grab coffee could receive a credit. Wouldn’t it be great to pull down a Toni Morrison novel from the shelf, point to a page, and say, “Look, I helped bring this text into existence.”

About Emerson: yes, yes, he doesn’t entirely ignore the social. And I do like Emerson quite a bit (I didn’t mean to come across negative in my last post). But his texts are extraordinarily contradictory. He talks about the value of books and past thinkers, yet he consistently advises people to be original and break away from history. He gives a lot of lip service about books in “The American Scholar,” but instead of talking about the value of books, he spends much more time talking about how books can cause problems for the scholar. Emerson struggled with his ideas, and the site of this struggle appears on the page in his contradictions.