The Fictional Audience

Ong's writing in "The Fictional Audience" surprised me most when they mentioned how little a reader actually thinks of their audience. In my style of writing, journalistic, I thought my largest task was to imagine my audience how to best convey my story to them. It was eye opening, yet completely understandable that a writer, rather, gives the reader a role. I can see it done in books I have read, and how successful it must be to cloak ever reader in the same role to secure understanding and participation in a given book. As mentioned on page 18, we most clearly see the aid of rhetoric in this transition to fictional audiences, in the emergence of the preface, and foreword. The rhetorical setting for each readers role has been set, and has "fixed" readership.