Prefatory Remarks by an Anonymous Author
If what is an author, is a question, then what is an expositor, is another . . . and this then amounts to what, here, now? Is this yet another fictional exploration of the role of expositor in an essay, and what the expositor becomes when the essay is a fictional essay; that is, if you wish to avoid over-simplifications concerning the way the author chooses to present this work of fiction, or any author any work of fiction . . . except of course the question arises, if the expositor is a fiction, and the essay is then a fictional essay, is there then an author created by the author that is aligned with the voice of the expositor inside the boundaries of the fiction, which has limits beyond the borders of the essay proper here written as an essay, but limited nonetheless, however inclusive it may be; that is, as any author is related with his narrator or expositor, if not one-to-one, which becomes part of a fallacy we perpetuate mistakenly out of laziness, then in another way, perhaps obliquely, unless we want to question what the fictionality of this essay really is, and why not just call it a short story, but then that would be about the boundaries of the short story as a genre, and just what is genre, anyway, in fiction or non-fiction, what is narrative writing and expository writing, dramatic writing, lyric writing . . . writing on writing, writing highlighting the process of writing, what to write or not to write, in what fashion–how is writing subjected to the whims of literary fashion?
What then is the essay, is a poem, is a short story or a novel . . . what then do we say about these the different yet the same ways we read them, are supposed to read them—is there a supposed to in the manner of reading a poem? What do you bring to the text, do I, does anyone anywhere any-when? Should we just let the writing be the writing and accept the context that the author establishes for the piece? Who is the author when a text is confronted–and we do do battle with a text? Is that true?
The essay seems to have as much plasticity as the novel, both of them being modern genres, and that’s modern as historically modern stretches over the last several centuries, perhaps from somewhere around the beginning of the 17th century, if you will, perhaps inclusive of the late 16th, as we might want to say for early Shakespeare, and Montaigne, who Shakespeare might have read, I like to think . . . so, then, what if must be the question; everything written has a what if, an inferred narrator or expositor and an inferred author, whether named or not. And the author of a text is one of the many authors an Author has in him, with him, beside him, the many authors Author?
The Falling Leaf Review 