tive realization of that design. Just as the meaning of an individual sentence
may not be in accord with an utterer’s particular intention, so too some ele-
ments of a narrative may work against rather than with its larger purposive
design. I will return to this point when I discuss the passages from Didion
and Bauby. For now I need to round off the discussion of the implied author.
FLESH-AND-BLOOD AUTHORS, IMPLIED AUTHORS, AND
OCKHAM’S RAZOR
As noted above, the case for intentionality is independent of a case for the via-
bility of the concept of the implied author (for this reason, I have been refer-
ring to the “writer” rather than the “implied writer”). In fact, some narrative
theorists who would support the arguments I have made for elbow room for
intentionality would still want to borrow that Razor from Ockham. Recently
David Herman, while arguing for the necessity of what he calls the intentional
stance, adds two other objections to the concept of the implied author: it con-
cedes too much to the anti-intentionalists, and it encourages its user to lose
sight of the fact that interpretive hypotheses should be defeasible. In light of
these objections, why not locate authorial agency in the actual rather than the
implied author?
The short answer is that I believe that Herman’s objections don’t have
much purchase on the concept of the implied author as I define it and that
the concept follows naturally from the case for intentions and purposes I have
been making. Before I elaborate, though, I do want to reiterate the point that
my case for elbow room for intentionality is ultimately more significant than
my case for the efficacy of the concept of the implied author. Those who grant
the first case are my theoretical allies, regardless of whether they grant the sec-
ond. Thus, although Herman argues against the concept of the implied author,
I very much welcome his case that “theories of narrative need to be calibrated
with the assumption that stories are irreducibly grounded in intentional sys-
tems” (“Narrative Theory” 240). Since I’m more concerned with elbow room
than with driving the anti-intentionalists out of the Hermeneutic Temple, I
would just alter “need to be” to “can be productively.”
As noted above, I want to locate the intentionality in the agency of the
implied rather than the flesh-and-blood author because I believe that such a
location is the appropriate extension of the case for intentionality I have just
made. Rhetorical theory is interested not in the author’s private intentions
but rather in his or her public, textualized intentions, and that interest entails
locating authorial agency in the implied rather than the actual author. From
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