Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
Sometimes it's not about what a person said/did but how what they said/did is perceived by others. I mean say I liked an author who had beliefs in their personal life that are supremacist in some way. I think such views are rather backwards myself, but someone else noting that I enjoy his/her fiction might come to the erroneous conclusion that I think in similar ways to the author, just because I like their fiction work. I think such perception says more about the person doing the perceiving than about what they are concerned about myself.
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Some folks can't separate the work from the author, and it works both ways.
Some ascribe a character's beliefs to the author's personal life even when the story makes then an antagonist, anti-hero, or outright villain. (S.M. Stirling's DRAKA series almost got him tarred and feathered.)
In other cases, perfectly fine stories get lionized until the author gives one interview too many or somebody close to them gets them branded as unsavory. Whereupon the author gets ostracized and the previously lionized books get flagged as trash, even post mortem.
Orson Scott Card and Marion Zimmer Bradley come to mind.
Oftentimes it is best not to know anything about the author and let the work speak for itself.