It might be an offense to purists, but the identity of an author tends to precede interactions with written work because of the nature of books: the cover giving the name, and how readers see cultures in names. Whether or not the work is allowed to speak requires the reader to open the book.

There is a moment when a choice is made: whether or not to even pick up a book, whether or not to open a book. If the author has a photo on the cover, there’s the reader’s personal response to the symbols in that photograph—it is a flat image that we see as symbols; the type of human, the accessories in the image that speak to details of that person. This formulation occurs before the words of the text are ever revealed. […]