In a cartoon from November 2010, we see Dutch literary writer Harry Mulisch in heaven, having seated himself on God's throne. The title of the cartoon is ‘Harry Mulisch Comes Home’. God looks a little surprised at being chased out of his chair. An approximate translation of Mulisch words to God reads: ‘Thanks, old boy, for keeping my seat warm’. This cartoon by Jean Gouders provides us with a telling representation of the ‘dead author’. The dead author, an important topos in literary theory from the 1970s onwards, appears here in a slightly paradoxical manner, being combined with an older topos, namely the Romantic cliché of the literary writer as a godlike figure and a genius.

Mulisch has been for decades – and remains – one of the most famous Dutch literary celebrities. In the 1950s, he debuted as a young rebellious writer of experimental prose. In the course of time, he became one of the Netherlands’ most famous authors. In the 1960s, he wrote a groundbreaking essay on the 1961 Eichmann trial and became a prominent figure during the cultural revolution in Amsterdam. From the 1970s onwards, Mulisch was a regular guest on Dutch television shows and even more present in Dutch newspapers and weeklies. With novels such as Twee vrouwen (Twice a Woman, 1975) and De aanslag (The Assault, 1982) he was nationally and internationally successful, although he is best known internationally for his novel De ontdekking van de hemel (The Discovery of Heaven, 1992). At the beginning of the 21st century Dutch media considered Mulisch a viable Nobel Prize for Literature candidate.

As a celebrity author, Mulisch succeeded in creating a coherent and recognizable ‘star image’. He structured his public identity along the lines of the ‘success myth’ that we come across in media texts so often. However, this mythical status as a celebrity author did not really fit the literary identity Mulisch had created for himself in several of his theoretical essays. In these texts, Mulisch formulated ideas comparable to Roland Barthes’ theory about ‘The Death of the Author’. In fact, the disappearance of the author as the mythical creator of the literary text appears to be a fundamental principle of Mulisch’ poetics.