From Macbeth:
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Like waiting for a particular e-mail... and that's the point. There seems to be a line in Shakespeare that's apposite to nearly every situation. So is all human life contained within the works of Shakespeare? Most of it, I should think. Who wrote all that stuff? Probably not Mr W Shakespeare of Stratford, but it doesn't matter. I continue to opine that authors become irrelevant when they die; the only thing that matters is what they leave behind.
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Wouldn't that be the case for most things after they die? Well, organic matter is important when it dies (or, well, rots, rather), at least to the earth, but in our silly human world?
Yes, of course. My point is, though, that I see no point in lionising authors for their own sakes. If you like a particular author's work, it's natural to have some interest in the person who wrote it. Where I think it goes wrong is when people make posthumous celebrities of them. I'm sure there are plenty of people who've never read a line of Shakespeare, but who still go to Stratford to see where the great man was born and lived. For me, the author is an important person while he's creating. Once he dies, he's just a dead one like every other dead one.
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