Alicia Rivero-Potter's Spanish-language volume Autor/lector examines the relationship between author and reader in the essay and fiction of four Latin American writers—Vicente Huidobro, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, and Severo Sarduy.
The book's first chapter examines the changing role of the reader, from antiquity to the 20th century. Each of the remaining chapters is devoted to a single writer and his works.
For Huidobro, the author can create fictional worlds without realistic constraints. Borges, differs from Huidobro, in that Borges feels that inspiration neither comes from nor is subject to the author's intellect but comes from without and is not completely subordinate to reason. Fuentes and Sarduy, on the other hand, debunk the author not only as an inspired, creative entity, but also as an authoritarian figure central to the meaning of a text.