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Originally Posted by darryl
Many people who create great art and literature are terrible human beings, and none are perfect. I let the works stand on their own merits.
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“Great” is a judgment that’s arrived at over time. It’s really hard to apply it in the present.
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I'm happy to know nothing about a writer of fiction or their background, particularly the colour of their skin or their sex. If a racist, a murderer or a child molester produces great work, I'm not going to deprive myself of the pleasure of reading it.
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Again, “great”? It’s an individual and situational call, but I’ll just note there are a lot of good, entertaining books out there. It’s hard for me to imagine something uniquely good or important. Generally, we’re not talking Shakespeare. And I really don’t buy it when people say they’re clueless about an author’s race, etc.
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If a work is related to crimes they have been convicted of then they may well not be entitled to the proceeds of the sales in any event. Even if they are, a traditionally published author will receive nothing or a tiny amount of royalty from each sale.
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Alrighty then, by the same logic, there’s no point in voting.
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And perhaps a great work of art or literature which brings pleasure to many may go towards making up for their crimes in some small way.
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Ugh. Far better to keep these two concepts entirely separate. The one can’t possibly compensate for the other. Moreover, they are, or should be, entirely unrelated anyway. Unless you’re saying that a molester who uses his experience as the font of his literature helps level the scales for what he did. “It’s true, he raped me at the age of 12, but a book came out of it, so it’s all good.”
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And, of course, of making you satisfied at the resulting widespread proliferation of your own virtue.
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Some projection here, perhaps?
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I was reading Orson Scott Card long before his personal views were derided. If you boycott his works then I can vouch for the fact that you are missing out on some great reading.
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Eh. Not my thing in any case. And as I said about, there’s no dearth of good books out there. But why would you think that your individual imprimatur carries any weight at all? This fuddles all your previous arguments, both about the individual having no weight (in regard to author’s profits) and the individual not being in a position to pass judgment.
But, whatever.