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the "concept of an author". Over the years we have acquired a set of "interpretive
strategies" that allow us to read a poem as a "poem", "these strategies exist prior to the
act of reading and therefore determine the shape ofwhat is read, rather than, as is usually
assumed, the other way around"."
The fact that different readers will apply the same interpretive strategies to a text, is (in
Fish's view) no argument for the existence of a "meaning in the text" that determines
the strategies we use. Certain groups of readers belong to certain "interpretive
communities" and therefore share the same strategies. Since readers share certain ideas
about and attitudes towards the text (e.g. that a text thatrhymes and is printed in lines is
a poem) theywill deal with the text in a certain way (e.g. regard line endings and rhyming
words as important). These interpretive communities and the strategies they use have a
temporary stability, but they are also open to change and variation (e.g. confronted with
free-verse poetry, the interpretive strategies change because the old ones are no longer
appropriate) and allow a certain amount ofdisagreement on a large basis ofagreement. It
is this idea of "interpretive communities" that saves Stanley Fish from complete
randomness and subjectivity and implies a certain stability.
For these critics, any text requires an active reader, with variations in the degree to which
the text invites it. More traditional texts tend to hide the fact that they are constructs
and have to be worked on by the reader and try to achieve a smooth, uninterrupted and
"natural" read, which they usually achieve by working within the traditions and not
against them. Other, more experimental texts, however, attempt a higher degree of
reader activity and break conventions to make reading a less smooth and more reflected
activity.
The question is how to implement this "active" role of the reader into the literary text
and produce a ''writerly'' text that the reader can co-author. The argument brought
forward in discussions of electronic writing acknowledges reader-response theories and
its re-evaluation of the process of reading as the site of meaning production and argues
77 Stanley Fish, "Interpreting the Variorum", in: Is There a Text in This Class? (London: Harvard
University Press, 1980).
Chapter 3 -page 123