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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
If I can quote the book Oath Of Fealty (Jerry Pournelle/Larry Niven) - "There's a lot of ways of being human."
The Olympia typewriter. <shrug> Why do some people bowhunt in the age of high-powered rifles? It's a tool he likes and understands, so he can focus on what he's writing. Hey, I still run some Atari 800 games, 25 years old, on an emulator, because I like them....
As to liking/disliking the artist, vis-a-vis his/her creation. If I like a piece of art, should I change my mind about it, just because the artist is a deficit personality? The artist, no matter how deficit, did something that few can do, i.e. make a piece of art that I like. And that liking is for the piece of art, not the artist.
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Should you? No. Will you, do you, that's my question and what I wonder about? I know I can't divorce the created from the creator, because I can't ignore information I have at hand. It taints my viewing/listening of any piece of work, just as if you add an extra ingredient to a sauce it changes the flavour. I was never a big fan of Ellison when I knew nothing of him, and I'm less of a fan the more I learn and the more I read. But I am always open to re-sampling work after awhile to see if I gain anything new from that work.
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The creation of rock-n-roll put anger, rage, and other negative emotions front and center in music for the first time in popular music (I'm deliberately ignoring Wagner). At the time, a lot of people thought that was evil. Some still do. And it was certainly different... Ellison makes his art about pain, pure and unadulterated. I read his works very sparingly. But, like rock-n-roll, he has added a totally different color to the writing pallette, and I respect that. Few writers accomplish that, even among the scores of successful writers.
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I'm not arguing against Ellison's reputation, I don't think anybody can cast doubt on his skills as a writer (whether I like his stories or not). I'm not actually arguing any point, except maybe that Ellison rubs me the wrong way and no matter how hard I try, I just can't see why that doesn't have the same effect on others.