On authors as people

[tamaranth]

There is currently a discussion* about various authors' views on fanfiction. Like previous discussions (RaceFail springs to mind) this has led to some unpleasant comments and some ad hominem attacks. (Whatever happened to polite disagreement?)

If an author expresses views that I don't agree with -- or even views that I regard as morally wrong -- it does not mean that the author's works suddenly, retrospectively, lose their quality. ("I used to like X's books, but ...") It does not mean that the author's friends, co-authors, etc share those views. It means that the author is expressing personal views: and the author-as-person is not the same as the author-as-author.

Yes, people write from themselves, but not everything they believe or think or feel will be in their writing, and not everything in their writing will be what they believe or think or feel. (I was somewhat disturbed by one author's reaction to one of her characters being loathed: 'that's me you're talking about'. NO-NO-NO, it's a creation. It's something, someone, you imagined. The fact that I can write about a murderer doesn't make me a murderer. And if people loathe your villain, UR DOIN IT RITE.)

I think the internet makes it easier to be (or to be read as) rude, aggressive, mendacious, and threatening. And wrong. But it's not impossible to be civilised online.

edit to add: new icon

*I'm being polite

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether it's the same thing, but Spider Robinson managed to comprehensively revolt me with Very Bad Deaths, and, while I'd been getting disenchanted with his work before that, I then found that the Suck Fairy had ruined his earlier work for me.

In particular, his smug attitude that you can just people's worthiness by their taste (which originally seemed like assertive fun) became totally grating.

That wasn't my problem with Very Bad Deaths-- he's got quite a sadistic imagination.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I think it is a different thing, to be put off by a work and feel differently about the author's previous. It's quite subjective (like the reason I won't read Harlan Ellison: read 'A Dog and His Boy' at the wrong time) but we are all subjective readers (and writers).

Trying to think logically about whether one's emotional response should revise one's previous opinions is ... difficult. I'm thinking of a situation where someone is subjectively offended or upset by an author's work or author-as-person behaviour: it's hard to say that they shouldn't let that reaction change their opinions. On the other hand (how many hands am I going to need for this?!) a subjective response might not be a valid reason for objective action: if someone is offended by an author's behaviour, are they right to remove author's books from a course list, or to stop stocking that author's books in a bookshop? I don't know: I have no answers. And yet it all springs from subjectivity.