The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

[Dragonus45]

The text ALWAYS exists in a vacuum. It was created but then exists separate from it's creator. J.R.R. Tolkien is dead, and yet his works persist onwards. The works he actually wrote. Not the works he kind of maybe thought about.

Everyone dies one day, and your text should be able to stand on it's own without your interpretation. The Author won't always be there, and so the author should be ignored unless they write something new.

If you don't know who the author is or was sure, but if you do know who the author was and you can find out what they had to say about it they take precedent. Every time. Unless they start waffling and changing their mind to the point it becomes clear they themselves don't actually know anymore.

Yes, and every aspect of a reader's life informs their reaction to the text.

And their life is different to the author, which causes the meaning they extract from the text to be different from the meaning the author had in mind, if any, when they wrote it.

And neither are a privileged interpretation.

Just because you are wrong about what the author was trying to say doesn't mean you then get to turn around and just say the author is now wrong. That isn't how things work.