Are you Dead, or, When you write, are you trying to say something?

Of course its an absurdity to ask such a question.  Be it resolved that everyone is different.  Be it resolved that all writing is different.  Even so: when you write, if you write, are you trying to say something?  

I think that this is a particularly difficult question for writers of speculative or genre fiction.  It seems apparent that there are plenty of stories that succeed despite an evident resolution not to say anything: stories that exist to prop up a nasty twist, the genre equivalent of a punch line.  Stories that aim to deliver a hypodermic needle full of generic thrills (that's generic in the literary sense, not in the sense of 'without distinguishing features', nor in the sense of an off-brand rip off like Shasta Cola).  Stories that make few demands on the reader.  

French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes says (stop me if you've heard this before) that "the Author is dead".  The statement was a middle finger to the kind of criticism you probably encountered in High School English class, where questions like "what did the author mean to say in (insert 'classic' novel here)?" served to nearly ruin the experience of reading.  The author, being dead, may not exact any demands on your attention.  You need not worry yourself with what she meant; provide your own meaning.  

But this proves troublesome to me, in that some authors clearly meant something.  As all arguments on the internet inevitably envelop Nazism I will not resist the temptation to go there.  Mein Kampf, Hitler's unreadably poorly written diatribe that was once required reading for Nazi youth and "good" citizens of the Third Reich, meant something to the author.  As such, it really can't be read outside of that context.  No sane person would read it as literature.  Sure, Joyce's Ulysses might lend itself to multiple interpretation, but I cannot imagine a world where Mein Kampf will ever be reinterpreted.  It stands for what it stands for. 

More to the point: are you, the writer dead?  I'm asking for a friend. 

Because so much of the rhetoric surrounding writing involves the ecstasies of "self-expression".  If the author is dead, and interpretation should be wholly separated from the author's intent, then what self is there to express?  If that is true, then self-expression may have some sort of inherent therapeutic value to the person writing, disgorging themselves, an exercise in exorcism.  But does self-expression have any value to the reader?  If you have ever met one of your favorite writers, you have an idea what I'm talking about -- you may have found they were now who you imagined.  

When you write a new piece of genre fiction, and here I'm assuming you do, do you hope to communicate a point to the reader?  Are you serving yourself on a platter, to be enjoyed objectively by the reader, as Salome, pictured below, seems to enjoy the head of John the Baptist?

Or are you offering up your writing to be interpreted as the reader will, as Dadaist artists reinvented household objects to create these dolls?

I could pretend to have an answer, but I don't, even though I suspect that in actual practice the writer will usually fall somewhere between the two.  I'll bet that, whoever you are, you have at some point felt that your writing has been misunderstood.  

Please, let me know.  I'll let my friend know what you said.