Authority Is Not Clarity: On Narrative Possession

I went to the library recently and picked up a book titled Authority by Andrea Long Chiu. It’s a collection of essays by a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer. The back cover calls her one of the greatest minds of our time. “Galaxy‑brain level thinker,” it says. I thought, okay—this should be serious. Authority is an extremely important concept in everything I’m thinking about and writing about. Who has authority, and why?