Interesting bit about authorial intent.

Rather than trying to resolve the unresolvable and aligning creators’ intentions with our own feelings, I think we ought to try to do something different: learn to live with ambiguous stories, and to embrace conflicts between authorial intent and our own interpretation.

I mostly do not care about authorial intent. It’s interesting as a measure, as the article points out, but the world and a work is broader and more diverse than any creator can imagine when making something.

Here’s another piece partially on authorial intent that even more succinctly states how I also feel about it.

Movies – like TV, literature, painting, culture – are orphans. They have parents who produce them and nothing more; their effect upon those who meet them later – the audience – is determined by all kinds of other factors. What an artist intended with a piece of art is mostly irrelevant, because what a work of art is is not defined by that intent.

Authorial intent and listening to what authors say about their works is to me kind of like the parent who hears their three-year-old opine that “the dog probably tastes like Pop Tarts.”

The usual response, “That’s nice, honey” works here too.

Authors are not omniscient nor are they omnipotent. Often, they are not even aware of the deeper meanings of what they write, surrounded by culture as are all the rest of us are, and many authors despite being very good are fairly ahistorical.

That is to say, once they unleash a work on the world, it is no longer theirs. Their opinion of it and interpretation thereof is no more valid than anyone else’s.