Bad Behavior

Last week I was scolded for my bad behavior at a reading. Well, not me personally. I was part of an audience who shared the collective blame. Our crime? To laugh at a passage read aloud by its author who hadn't intended her words to be funny.

The passage in question was a short story about psychoanalysts during the 1950's by author Sarah Schulman. Much of the dialogue was so loaded with psychological jargon that we as members of the audience had only two possible interpretations of it: either the author had a tin ear for realistic dialogue or the author was trying to make a joke. Being in a generous mood, we went for the latter option, and laughed.

When Schulman finished reading, we gave her a hearty round of applause, for which she thanked us with an indignant reprimand. "That story wasn't funny," she informed us, as if the reaction of a crowd of one hundred reasonably intelligent listeners could not have counted for as much as the author's opinion, since the author always knows best. Schulman went on to explain that the jargon that made us laugh came out of an impulse for positive change and healing and that our nervous laughter showed how inept and uncomfortable we as cynical modern people were at hearing that kind of language. In other words, we laughed because we were shallow, or at least, not as enlightened as Schulman presumably was.

Schulman's claim to authorial supremacy strikes me as quite astounding in an age when the "death of the author" has been proclaimed often and loudly. We've had schools of critics who've analyzed texts with complete disregard for the author's background, instead focusing only on the words on the page. We've had other schools of critics claim that the individual author is merely a function of complex social phenomena and therefore doesn't even exist. And yet here is Schluman demanding, almost like Stalin or Mao, that there is only one true path, the author's path, and that for a reader to take any other is heresy.

As an author, I'm often surprised by the reactions of readers, who sometimes miss what I was trying to say but often pick up on meanings that I hadn't consciously intended. I feel that as long as readers can point to places in the text that back up their response, their response is valid. But then I grew up in an educational system that promoted this same point of view. Schulman, who seems a little older than I am, may have been educated in a different way. Also, I am writing my work at a time when I am relatively free to write about gay subject matter and to be up front about my identity. This freedom is thanks to the pioneering efforts of writers like Schulman, who wrote about queer themes at a time when such writing was not so commonplace. Perhaps she found it necessary to develop a certain stridency of character, an "I'm right and all of you are wrong" philosophy, in order to simply do her work.

Whatever the reason for Schulman's beef with her audience last week, she could have reacted to the situation in any number of ways. She could have said, "I'm glad you enjoyed the story, but actually, it wasn't my intention to be funny. Here's what I was trying to do in this story..." She could have laughed at her own failure to convey her intended message that evening and hoped for better audiences in the future. She could have gone home and complained to her girlfriend, her therapist, or her dog. She could have realized that an author is often the person who understands her work least. She could have done nothing.

Instead Schulman told the crowd who had taken time from their busy lives to listen to her words and applaud her efforts that they were not smart enough to understand her work. Fair enough. Since I'm not smart enough, I won't bother making the attempt ever again.

P.S. Since I originally published this post, Sarah Schulman herself was kind enough to comment on it, as you'll see below. She says that she was simply surprised by the audience's reaction and didn't mean to come off a scold. Thank you, Sarah, for putting in your two cents. I'm happy to give our author-reader relationship another chance.