'The Author' is subtly unflinching in its satirical attack on certain practices in the creation of art and the mediation of violence.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
If there isn't at least the threat of violence in art, it tends to be kind of tiresome.
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
The work of the artist is to express what is repressed or even to speak the unspoken grief of society.
A book makes claims of literary art.