Personally I only ever want to hear it later, and even then only as an exercise in analyzing my own view of the work vs what the author thought - did I read them right, did I see enough implied context to dig into them as a person, or are there things going on that I just don't know about. Its always interesting to know how understanding vs intent shakes out, but ultimately the reality of how our world works means your only ever going to be 'close' and the internal understanding a person develops is always more valuable than the external dictation provided by others.
The easy example is americans reading europian literature. This isn't meant to trash on americans, its just easy since american culture is hard to dodge in the english speaking world, and therefore american analysis of other cultural works is just as hard to dodge. When you read one of those analysies and then you compare it against an analysis that shares a culture with the author, there's always going to be fairly plain differences in how things are taken, just because the context of the person reading is going to colour the analysis. On one hand you could say the american is just wrong - they started from the wrong point and got to the wrong end. On the other hand, and what I feel is more interesting, is that the starting point and by extension the ending point, says a huge amount about the person reading and what they're looking for. The author could dictate what they were going for, but that dictation is less interesting and less meaningful than taking a closer look at what lead to the difference.
The most interesting thing I ever came across with respect to how people interact with media is the phrase "If you're seeing it (reading/listening/consuming) then it's for you". More so than ever in a world where google suggests news articles to you based on what you've been reading. So we have a person who was lead to a piece of media that isn't from where they're from, who then consumes it and produces an opinion based on their own context. So you get three competing aspects - the system that helped you find this thing, what you've got going on inside, and the context of the world you're experiencing this stuff in. And from that farts out an opinion. Tolkien got brought up above here so consider this: start by assuming the readers are honest and the author is honest. That means that the context, internal workings and intent of the author was such that political commentary was completely not part of their goal and therefore the statement that they were making a commentary on it seems crazy. But at the exact same time, the context and internal workings of the reader who was lead to consume this media was such that the only conclusion was that there must be political commentary present. Isn't that wild?
