One of the important elements here is the extent to which materially it matters. If I buy a book Lovecraft wrote a hundred years ago the money isn't going to end up diverted to support the "patriots" who want to intimidate my neighbours, whereas when I buy a Harry Potter box set for a relative you can bet that Rowling's share will help fund "Gender Critical" movements trying to make life worse for some of my friends and colleagues...
For books particularly I can totally buy Death of the Author, what I think I read might be entirely different from what the author says they intended, which further nobody can prove is what they actually intended. For that last for example I do not for one moment believe Vernor Vinge that he "Didn't know" what Rabbit is in "Rainbow's End". It's an AI. Maybe Vinge doesn't intend the book as a Singularitarian Catastrophe (you can argue the book thinks it's about avoiding such a catastrophe) but I don't see any way to interpret it where Rabbit isn't a super-human AI.
You're conflating whether one should feel guilty for supporting an author, and whether the author's speech outside a work matters to understand its intended meaning.
The latter is the actual Death of the author, the former is usually called Death of the author by people who want to separate themselves from the authors they know they can be judged for supporting.
I think my point was distinct from naming this idea (Death of the Author). It wasn't about guilt it was about consequences and those are distinct things.
Also, AIUI Death of the Author is not about whether their beliefs mattered to understand the intended meaning, but instead whether "intended meaning" is even a thing anyway. No need to understand it if it doesn't exist. I prefer in other contexts not to try to guess intentions when I can instead look at the effects and it seems to me our law and practice agree.
Notice for example that while proving attempted murder requires that you wanted the victim to die, murder does not. The fact that they are dead satisfies this aspect of the crime, you aren't innocent of murder just because you didn't intend that the victim would die.
> "you aren't innocent of murder just because you didn't intend that the victim would die."
You might be; from the UK's Crown Prosecution Service guidance website[1]: "Involuntary Manslaughter. Where an unlawful killing is done without an intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm, the suspect is to be charged with manslaughter not murder.". From Wikipedia[2]: "In English law, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder."
The GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) is crucial there. The intent only needs to be GBH which is way easier to prove, for example weapon use. The prosecutors don't need to prove intent to kill, the death is evidence that you killed somebody (except in the rare cases they can't produce a corpse, for which they have to do more work)
What if there is no GBH intent either? What if you are just being negligent or careless, like speeding while driving thinking you are a better-than-average driver and won't crash, or if you are not speeding and someone runs out in front of you, or if you are throwing roof tiles off a roof as you remove them while thinking people will see and hear what you are doing and walk around the pile, and you end up killing someone?
The death is evidence that you killed somebody, but you can still be "innocent of murder" (and guilty of manslaughter instead. In the UK). That's why there are so many varieties of manslaughter, to determine how culpable the person is, whether they were negligent, whether they were comitting another crime, etc.
One of the important elements here is the extent to which materially it matters. If I buy a book Lovecraft wrote a hundred years ago the money isn't going to end up diverted to support the "patriots" who want to intimidate my neighbours, whereas when I buy a Harry Potter box set for a relative you can bet that Rowling's share will help fund "Gender Critical" movements trying to make life worse for some of my friends and colleagues...
For books particularly I can totally buy Death of the Author, what I think I read might be entirely different from what the author says they intended, which further nobody can prove is what they actually intended. For that last for example I do not for one moment believe Vernor Vinge that he "Didn't know" what Rabbit is in "Rainbow's End". It's an AI. Maybe Vinge doesn't intend the book as a Singularitarian Catastrophe (you can argue the book thinks it's about avoiding such a catastrophe) but I don't see any way to interpret it where Rabbit isn't a super-human AI.