I picked up a book, What Nietzsche Really Said. Overall,it's a valuable book, by some professors from  Texas. But what follows, I balked at: 

In defense of wicked acts either inspired by Nietzsche or justified by reference to him, the authors wrote, "Once again, we want to proclaim, rather indignantly, that an author is not responsible for vile misreadings of his works."

Okay, it would be silly to hold an author to blame for the extreme misreading of a theme or metaphor. But to give a writer absolute license to create without taking any responsibility is in a sense denying the power of language and image.

For example, the Beatle's White Album got some vile misreadings by Charles Manson. He perceived "Blackbird" as a call for him to spark a violent uprising by the black community, and at least one reason he engineered the Tate murders was so that white folks, blaming black folks, would take revenge, causing black folks to retaliate. That interpretation was truly nuts. But for him to accept the literal words of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" as a validation of his homicidal inclinations didn't require the slightest misreading of any kind except to decline to replace the literal with the symbolic.

If I went to Texas and bumped into the professors, I might argue that while authors shouldn't plague themselves with guilt over potential misreadings, they most certainly should consider how their words might affect impressionable readers. And children are the only impressionable ones around.