"What is an Author?"

According to Foucault an author is very important and differs from a writer. An author is given a name and the name means something, it has importance. You can link a piece of work to an author through the way it’s written, the style, phrases used, ideas and also the timeline like if historical dates are mentioned do they coincide with the life span of the author. He also says that the name of an author is a description which I understand. Once you have the name of an author it is not only their name but it describes who they are and their thoughts. He used the example of Aristotle. When one hears that name you automatically think a great thinker and philosopher and it determines what kind of work you will be reading.
Foucault then discusses the word, ‘work’ and what it actually means. When we call something a work it is because it is written by someone and that someone is an ‘author’ (p 1262). He is saying that for something to have credit as being a work of literature or a work of art it needs a name, an author to go with it. He also says, “[…] if some have found it convenient to bypass the individuality of the writer or his status as an author to concentrate on a work, they have failed to appreciate […] the word ‘work’ and the unity it designates” (1262). Again he is saying that for a work to be a work it needs the author to be recognized.
He also discusses the idea of ecriture which indicates writing as the interaction of presence and absence. I didn’t quit understand him until he said that you see references to the author in his absence. I do understand what he is trying to say. It goes back to being able to link different works to the same author through using the language, ideas, and phrases used. Even if a text’s author is unknown you could link it through clues that the author would use even though his/her name is absent.
I thought it was interesting to read about how works were only called scientific once they had the name of the author to go along with them (1264). By giving the name of the author it “marks a proven discourse” (1264). It is true because when we see an anonymous author we immediately want to know who it is that wrote what we just read so that we can think it to be more believable and real. I don’t know if this is the best example but it is all I can thin of at the moment. When the Harry Potter books first came out and you found out that the author was J.K. Rowling, yes you had a name but you had also found out that it was a pseudonym. Immediately I know I wanted to know who it really was and I had originally thought is was a male author but later found out it was a female who picked an ambiguous alias because she thought it might help the sale of the book. I think in our society we always want to know everything and we won’t stop until we do or we will not believe something until we get the answer.
I also thought how Foucault talked about more then literary texts having authors. It is true that art, music even theories have authors. Homer and Aristotle as he uses as examples are authors of theories. He feels that to be a “great” author one needs to not only write their own text but also make it possible for others to write about the subject and write about differences they see. I agree with him on this I feel that a great author needs to influence others and create controversy as well.