After reading Ann M. Penrose and Cheryl Geisler’s Reading and Writing Without Authority, they state “paternalism is the action of one person interfering with another person’s actions or thoughts to help him.” To simplify, it is making decisions for others’ best interest but without their consent. The reason I bring this up is because they compare the use of this definition from two different writers named Janet and Roger, respectively. The statement previously quoted was from Janet who wrote a more factual way while Roger writes about paternalism as “matters yet to be resolved.” Two distinct personalities writing differently about one single subject.
Fast forward within the article, Penrose and Geisler remark that Roger “[for him,] reading was a process of identifying, sorting, and evaluating the claims made by the various authors. This required him to analyze an author’s claims into parts and think about the validity of each part separately.” To simplify, Roger looks to evaluate and evolve his definition and work as he writes his paper. Something completely opposite to Janet who writes based on a factual outlook. This got me to thinking about how much writers, in the fictional sense, use real world situations with their stories that are fantasy, etc.
Trust the Author with Authority?
It must be odd that people can get swept into any book or other type of media, taking in so much information as factual. The first thing that comes to mind are news outlets as inform the public but focus on specific key events. Also, they might format their report to invoke a response to the audience. This is common in most forms of media. It’s just interesting being aware of the process as it happens. There are a lot of interesting things that jump out at you.
The author, in the sense of fictional writing, must setup a story that the reader can invest in while also believing most of what is written. How much research does an author put in for a story that might include some random, small act that barely breaks a paragraph? For example, an author might want to write a story that includes a pirate but they don’t know exactly the type of dialect or slang that is typically used. They could just write how most assume that a pirate would speak. That’s the easy way out. The harder way is where an author who would take the time to research and basically go through a history lesson just to get a single characters dialect down. This is what I think about when it comes to authenticity. How much of realism should there be in fictional work?
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