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I’ve seen many threads in assorted places around AW that pose variants of the question: if nobody reads you, are you a writer? What is being asked here, I think, is a version of Berkeley’s old falling tree in the forest question. If, as he wrote, “to be is to be perceived,” (esse est percepi) then is not to be perceived not to be? Or, if nobody ever reads what you wrote, then did you ever write anything? Of course the next question is: how many readers would it take to make someone a writer? One?
A common retort to this is a variant of the opinion that it is the act of writing, or even simply proclaiming yourself a writer, that does it – if you say you’re a writer, then you are. One of my favorite weird writers, James Branch Cabell, said to “avow yourself a poet,” and like magic you became one.
So although readers need writers, do writers always need readers? For example, was Anne Frank a writer because historical chance gave us her writings, or simply because she wrote?
A common retort to this is a variant of the opinion that it is the act of writing, or even simply proclaiming yourself a writer, that does it – if you say you’re a writer, then you are. One of my favorite weird writers, James Branch Cabell, said to “avow yourself a poet,” and like magic you became one.
So although readers need writers, do writers always need readers? For example, was Anne Frank a writer because historical chance gave us her writings, or simply because she wrote?