Author vs. Writer

A good portion of our class discussions about interpretation have centered around the difference between the writer and the author in relation to a work. A writer is the actual individual who created the work, whereas the author is the particular state of mind of that writer when they composed the work. Thus, discerning the author is the much more prevalent endeavor when determining the meaning of a literary work. But this position is also fraught with some difficulty.

First of all, the actual person who wrote the novel should always be considered when one is attempting to interpret a work; while the writer's "state of mind" is important to understand, it is also important to understand the world of the writer and the experiences that he or she had through his or her life. Without any knowledge of the writer or the writer's environment, an understanding of his or her work would be woefully incomplete. Also, understanding the writer's state of mind (author) requires a certain amount of guesswork and postulation as Wollheim proposes. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that a writer might undergo several changes of "mind state" throughout the process of creating his or her work. Would this mean that a correct interpretation of a particular work would require the postulation of multiple authors in order to fully understand it? This is a position which I believe requires more defense, in regards to such an event.