Example Of Book Review On Shaw's "First Aid To Critics"

George Bernard Shaw's "First Aid to Critics" is an archive of the common criticisms of George Bernard Shaw plays, written by the author himself, meant to be somewhat of an explanation as well as a rebuttal to critics to those saying that his plays are unoriginal and trite. Shaw seems to have quite a bit of bitterness about critics and their criticisms; to those who say his ideas are unoriginal, he explains that he was only "echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen" (Shaw). While his criticisms and insights are certainly valuable, and a rare glimpse into the mind of an author in the wake of critics of his work, his defensiveness and determination to make sure people "get" his plays may also rob the audience or the reader/watcher of their role in the author/reader transaction.
In art, the enjoyer and spectator of art has their own responsibility to the work: to pay attention. They are meant to engage with the work and take from it what they will, whether or not it is what the author intended. Barthes (1977), in his essay "Death of the Author," claims that that author is a "modern figure, a product of our societyit discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is more nobly put, the 'human person'" (pp. 142-143). To that end, the phenomenon of the importance of authorial intent is often explained; Shaw seems to wholeheartedly believe that the ultimate goal of enjoying his works is to decipher the meaning that he imbues into it. If someone takes something else from it, or dismisses it outright, they just don't get it. His insistence, for example, that he is much more influenced by British authors than foreign writers like Nietzsche may or may not be a strict denial of any subconscious influence he may have. By responding so defensively and vehemently, he may simply be attempting to craft a specific narrative for himself and his own perception of his work, instead of letting the audience craft their own interpretations and thoughts from the work.
Many readers see the need to honor the intention of the individual who wrote it by also understanding and subscribing to their interpretation. To these individuals, works are written with specific agendas or interpretations in mind, and it is a disservice to the author to disregard these interpretations or intentions. From this perspective, external evidence is often the primary determiner for what a work 'means,' as all that matters is what the author says and does, and what he meant when he wrote the work. This is an extremely reductive way of looking at literature and art, as it implies that equally reasoned and valuable interpretation of a work, even when they become personally important to the reader, are rendered less valid because it is not what was 'meant' to be taken from the work by the author. As Barthes says in "Death of an Author," "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text" (p. 147). It is, according to proponents of authorial intent, possible to get a literary interpretation 'wrong,' even though said meaning could work in a vacuum (Barthes, 1977). Shaw's preface, being a naked and inflammatory treatise against his critics, heavily imposes the author's will on the work, forcing the reader to endure the author's intent (which is irrelevant to the reading of a work).
Barthes notes that literary criticism is not about deciphering texts, not to try and guess what the author was thinking when they wrote it; instead, the intent of criticism is just to glean whatever can be found from the work, usually based on the reader's own biases, experiences and the like. "To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing" (Barthes, 1977). The author being factored in to the search for meaning in a work is to impose the author's own opinions on the reader, and to perform "interpretive tyranny" on them. There are many different meanings and layers to be found in a variety of works, and the reader can extrapolate different ideas from the work than were intended from the author. "A text's unity lies not in its origins, but in its destination" - here, Barthes notes that the reader, being the ultimate consumer of the work, has the ultimate purview regarding what the final meaning of the work is for them. With that in mind, Shaw's insistence that anyone who disagrees with his work is "a fool and a liar, and is hereby solemnly denounced and cursed as such by me, the author, to all posterity" is relatively unfair and defensive (Shaw).
Authors, according to Barthes, are "scriptors" - creators of the work, but not influences upon the work. It is not their job to explain the meaning of the work; the scriptor "is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, [and] is not the subject with the book as predicate" (Barthes, 1977). The reader, therefore, is co-author and co-writer along with the original author - the reader is creating the meaning for themselves, with the help of the raw materials provided by the author. Barthes simply does not believe was can truly ascertain what the author intended when they wrote the work, and we should not need to - there is no one single perspective to ascribe to a single work, just as a single event can be viewed through many different viewpoints.
In conclusion, Shaw's attacking of critics in "First Aid to Critics" is somewhat of a disingenuous attempt to guard his reputation at the expense of the reader's own interpretation of a work. To rob a reader of a meaning that they independently gained through a work is to deny the validity of their viewpoint, when the act of reading and criticism is supposed to be a conversation between reader and text. To that end, Barthes demonstrates that the author is dead, since, after the piece is fully written and removed from further editing, the author has no claim to what kind of experience should be had by the reader; the reader is not "wrong" for picking up something different from the work. This is something that Shaw would do well to recognize; influences are often subconscious, and with that in mind any attempt to prove readers wrong in what they think of a work can be a foolish exercise.