Post 13

“Almost without our realizing it, writing is changing. Over the last few decades, the fields of literature and rhetoric and composition have more or less agreed that authors are not omnipotent (except as literary devices)” (Johnson-Eilola 199).

This notion of an omnipotent author is interesting. Back in the day an author could write a book 100% through and readers would take his word for the truth. Now books often have multiple authors, multiple editors and a multitude of sources. This transition raises the proverbial bar and forces more authors who would have been omnipotent to encompass more sources and other authors to produce a better, more holistic text.

The only issue with this transition, one could argue, is an author could feel their inherent “style” may be loss in this filter of additional authors and editors. It’s undeniable the act of placing someone else’s words into your own text is in turn de-stylizing the text. But only to an omnipotent author, but in fact the text still possess a “style”, just a combination of multiple sources “style”.