Helen, thank you for your further response to our brief discussion regarding the author/reader dynamic, particularly in relation to your appreciation for a reader "taking the piece in the right spirit."

Perhaps we can explore this a little more later.

I wrote the original piece some ten years ago. An earlier version is archived at the National Library, available here:http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10072/20030203/www.uq.net.au/_enhdemid/christmas.html

Retraction, please.

I have made this comment at Catallaxy on the relevant thread. It is worth repeating here:

Two people who obviously have no desire to hang on to their assets have accused me of plagiarizing a 2005 piece on Christmas at OLO. These claims were repeated at Larvatus Prodeo by Liam, Fyodor and FDB. Since then, Mark Bahnisch, LP editor, has deleted the relevant comments because they are obviously defamatory. To do him credit, also Fyodor attempted to post a correction. It too has been deleted, however.

I wrote the first draft of this piece (and did the bulk of the translations) in 1997. The piece was archived for posterity (along with a great deal of my other material) at the National Library of Australia. If you peruse my archive (link below), you will note that the piece appears in every iteration of my material going back to 1998.

I strongly suggest the parties concerned withdraw the implication that I plagiarized something written in 2005. I should also note I am posting a full account of this matter here and at Catallaxy due to the deletions at LP.

My archive at the NLA is here: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/10072

The link to the article in question is here:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10072/20030203/www.uq.net.au/_enhdemid/christmas.html

Helen, I'm sure you appreciate that was important to clear up. Thank you for doing so, happily, from my perspective at least. May we go on?

I first came across your piece here, and while I appreciate your diligence and efforts with Catallaxy, I am not so much interested in terminology such as "post-modern" and "Libertarian" simply because I feel these can box people up, arbitrarily and uselessly, and much time is spent in talking about those terms themselves, rather than getting to a useful jist - though I do understand these terms achieve that for those who choose them so. That is, maybe you will find it acceptable to continue on here at On Line Opinion.

However, it is clearly a matter for law to wish to pigeon-hole things, and this raises some interesting questions regarding creative authorship for public receipt.

I haven't quite been given to your parliamentary analogy, probably due to not giving it thinking time, and that it throws up too many loose interpretations on first blush.

These points certainly resonate:

"I do believe that this can be taken too far." [In the context that a "reader is entitled to respond in accordance with whatever he or she takes from the piece"].

"If an author says 'I wanted my work/this poem/this scene to mean X', that view has to be accorded respect."

(continued)..

(cont..)

Effectively, it appears then that you consider it a matter of 'weight', is that so? That the weight of "rightness" as to what is the spirit of the piece resides with the author? (If so, maybe this raises the question that there is then an onus upon the reader to "elucidate" the right spirit?).

I am not in disagreement with you; though there is another perhaps conflicting perspective, which for which I am the same. That you are a lawyer and a creative writer is interesting in these discussions, because, is it not (also) true, that creative writing serves to explode that which is pigeon-holed? (As in the context of art; spoken of as it is in terms of nourishing, enriching and even developing the soul, humanity.)

If so, does creative writing explode pigeon-holes by supplying insight which unsettles an original premise, or two? And is there then inclination towards the settling of another (new) premise?

Or does it do it, if so, by drawing together premises already in existence?

What of all this does the reader supply?

It's seriously good fun stuff. Not the least of which, that law and creativity are not as separate as may appear, upon respectful reflection. And should I use premise or premiss, in speaking of art?

Just to clarify some aspects of Helen's comments.

I'm not the "editor" of Larvatus Prodeo, just one of its bloggers and its founder.

Comments were deleted from a thread at LP after I was alerted to them via email from Helen, taking into account her view that the comments were defamatory of her.