Books and Problematic Authors

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Milo is a professional troll who makes his living by being purposely shocking and outrageous. Eventually it comes back to bite him.

It's like complaining about Kathy Griffin getting fired from CNN.



I mean you could say it that way. But at that point you are twisting things so far away from reality, what's the point?

Simply put, Ronan Farrow who won a Pulitzer prize and broke the Weinstein story is currently a bigger deal than his father is. And it can't be ignored that we are talking about two members of the same family involved in a feud.

The publisher stuck to the one who sells more books. The other went to a different large publisher. No tears were shed.

True on all accounts, but these were still books that were dropped by the publisher not the author.

There’s also Linda Fairstein, while technically she didn’t have a book canceled, she was dropped by her publisher which means she’s going to have to find a new one or self publish.

Which really does get to the root of the issue here. These days it’s not terribly hard to self publish. You don’t need a lot of cash to do it, and if you don’t do a print version or do print on demand you can still have an ebook. I’d imagine getting it on to the various ecosystems out there may take some doing. But it’s still very possible.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

True on all accounts, but these were still books that were dropped by the publisher not the author.

Yes, but authors were dropped by their publishers before the advent of Twitter. Hey, singing 'America The Beautiful' to a White Nationalist crowd giving the Nazi salute might not be the most beneficial thing for your career.

Not everything is the result of 'cancel culture'.

There’s also Linda Fairstein, while technically she didn’t have a book canceled, she was dropped by her publisher which means she’s going to have to find a new one or self publish.

I haven't read up much on Linda Fairstein. She does seem to be the one single concrete example of this happening. Which makes cancel culture as much of a priority for me as voter fraud.

[MarjaE]

I see 3 questions here--

1. Should we separate the works from what we know of the authors' views and intentions? I would say no. Tolkien's works may be a good example, since his works incorporate a lot of racist attitudes, as well as royalist tropes about descent have been interpreted as racist ones, even as he's trying to oppose racism.

2. Or the authors' other actions? I think it depends. P.S. And railroading 5 black kids is *relevant* when someone is writing mystery or crime, or frankly anything involving American society.

3. Should we refuse to read and/or support certain works because they might fund or signal-boost or otherwise support evil? I think we should refuse to support some. Of course No Ethical Consumption and all that...

I see this as a matter of criticism and choice, not censorship. I haven't read the Princeton letter and wouldn't feel qualified to weigh in on it if I had.

Is there another question I'm missing here?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I see 3 questions here--

1. Should we separate the works from what we know of the authors' views and intentions? I would say no. Tolkien's works may be a good example, since his works incorporate a lot of racist attitudes, as well as royalist tropes about descent have been interpreted as racist ones, even as he's trying to oppose racism.

2. Or the authors' other actions? I think it depends. P.S. And railroading 5 black kids is *relevant* when someone is writing mystery or crime, or frankly anything involving American society.

3. Should we refuse to read and/or support certain works because they might fund or signal-boost or otherwise support evil? I think we should refuse to support some. Of course No Ethical Consumption and all that...

I see this as a matter of criticism and choice, not censorship. I haven't read the Princeton letter and wouldn't feel qualified to weigh in on it if I had.

Is there another question I'm missing here?

Personally I don't agree with any of your answers. YMMV, of course. And that's what this discussion is about.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I see 3 questions here--

1. Should we separate the works from what we know of the authors' views and intentions? I would say no. Tolkien's works may be a good example, since his works incorporate a lot of racist attitudes, as well as royalist tropes about descent have been interpreted as racist ones, even as he's trying to oppose racism.

2. Or the authors' other actions? I think it depends. P.S. And railroading 5 black kids is *relevant* when someone is writing mystery or crime, or frankly anything involving American society.

3. Should we refuse to read and/or support certain works because they might fund or signal-boost or otherwise support evil? I think we should refuse to support some. Of course No Ethical Consumption and all that...

I see this as a matter of criticism and choice, not censorship. I haven't read the Princeton letter and wouldn't feel qualified to weigh in on it if I had.

Is there another question I'm missing here?

Tolkien a racist? Gosh, I guess if I had any orc blood in me, I might be upset at him.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I am going to respectfully ask that folks not make blanket statements about the LGBT community. One person does not represent the views of all of us, or even a majority of us. (I am also rather tired of seeing many of you refer to my community as merely being "politically correct."

Well said. The "dismissers" do tend to use a broad brush.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Tolkien a racist? Gosh, I guess if I had any orc blood in me, I might be upset at him.

Well, by modern standards he was actually. All the good people in the LOTR are white, and the people from the East and South fight on Sauron's side.

Still, we shouldn't measure him with the 21st century yardstick, as always in such cases.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

Ok...Samuel R. Delaney. I read some of his books, and had absolutely *no* idea of his race (just like I have no idea of the race of 99.9% of other authors that I've read, TBH). I didn't know that he was African-American until I just googled to find some non-white science fiction authors.

The same goes for Walter Mosley. I've read a lot of the Easy Rawlins books and had no idea of his race, either. It's not only that I don't care, I honestly didn't know.

This also goes for gender--When I read "The Outsiders" as a child, I had no idea the S.E. Hinton was woman.

You can believe me or not, but when I'm reading a story, I don't notice or think about the race or gender of the author unless it's constantly thrown in my face.

Shari

I too usualy don't pay attention to the sex or race of the author. I read a story because it sounds like I may like it. I have been known to specifically pick something written by a woman. But race doesn't play into it except for the book Slave By Octavia E. Butler. It did make sense that she is a woman of color. It makes the story more profound.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

In an earlier post Rider Haggard was accused of racism in books.

I disagreed and gave an example from the last Allan Quatermain book, which would be inconceivable if he was such a racist.

I then asked for an example of racism in his books

No one gave any.

So later I asked again for an example of racism in his books

Agaiin No one gave any.

So I will ask one last time and if no examples are given, I will take it that the accusation is just empty virtue signalling.

https://steemit.com/africa/@gandhiba...olomon-s-mines

I will conclude this essay by reemphasizing that Africa is a great continent and the centre of human civilization. There are historical facts to prove that Africa had made significant advancement in diverse areas before the advent of the Europeans. Therefore, writings such as Haggard's King Solomon's Mines are racist and ethnocentric, merely written to justify the racial, colonial, and imperialistic climate of the time. Africa was never a dark continent and a thousand lies by Haggard would not make it be.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've read King Solomon's Mines and liked it very much. I don't think the author was a racist, considering the times he lived and wrote in.

I've also read Queen Sheba's Ring by Haggard. It wasn't as good as his first book and there were some elements there a bit more grating. But no, still not racist for his time.

By modern standards he was a racist, of course. So were almost all the other 19th and early 20th century writers.

I disagree. I do think Haggard is a racist. I agree with the article I linked.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

This seems to be venturing--the thread, not your post, Sirtel--into the area of "books written by and featuring standards or ideas that we no longer hold to be true or right." Like Haggard, or any other authors of that era or earlier.

But if you're going to do that--if you're going to say that you shan't read Haggard, because you feel his views were racist, or similar writers, then you are going to also have to ban from your shelves pretty much any fiction (or non, for that matter) featuring women, in near-perpetuity, including Jane Austen, who featured women inveigling to get married, as their only futures. Mr. D'Arcy's kind and generous act--salvaging Lydia's reputation--is worthless today as nobody would give two figs if she ran off with Wickham. (Not to mention all the other stereotypes, etc.)

I've very happy tto ignore Jane Austen. The fact I cannot stand her writing helps a lot.

Almost every piece of fiction written, hell, well into the 70's, is condescending, patronizing and demeaning to women. Read anything by Mickey Spillane. Anything by Chandler. Read anything by pretty much ANYBODY.

If you're going to ban from your shelves anything written by anyone who doesn't share your modern sensibilities, you are going to have shelves that aren't very full and aren't very deep. That's simply a fact. Humans have changed and developed--I don't say evolved, as that word is egregiously misused to indicate shifting social mores--and that's simply part of history. We don't send entire colonies now to unknown lands, for the purposes of "bringing the Faith" to people, as did Isabella and Ferdinand. We no longer slave-trade. We no longer have laws on the books that "dictate" what size rod a man could legally and rightfully use to beat his wife. But those laws existed and the people--and characters--of that time reflect that.

But if you're going to say that you won't read any novels or books, written by anyone who ever thought that any of those things were right or normal...well. Then I really do feel sorry for you, because you will miss some fantastic literature.

Issy, for example, is very fond of The Three Muskateers, and it's hard to find what is described as a "rollicking adventure" that is more misogynistic than that. I mean, let's face it; how the would-be heroes treat women hardly meets 21st-Century standards. So...if we're going to be limiting what we read, it seems that we should be even-handed about it.

Right?

Hitch

Are these books written because the author's feel women are not as good as men or is that just the way they write? That to me is a big difference.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Jon raised this point somewhere in this thread and I responded that I felt we shouldn’t extend any sort of not reading to authors writing in the same universe. He had used Lovecraft for his example. Which would become rather problematic because of how far and wide the influence of Lovecraft is in literature. And I’m not even including the surface level kind of reference here where a book might name a big bad after one of the elder gods. The authors of these works are, as far as we know, not problematic they’re merely building in the universe of a problematic author.

I say problematic only because it’s the verbiage of the thread. I think Lovecraft might have fallen into the product of his time category but I’m not really looking to debate around a single author being problematic or not. He’s only used above because he’s well known, as are the issues with him, and the spread of the influence of his fictional universe. Which I think fits rather exceedingly well with the topic I quoted.

I say we don't read the works of others based on Lovecraft's work if we should read Lovecraft before the other works in order to get more out the other works. Because that means the newer books are kindle of forcing us to read Lovecraft in order ot get the most out of the newer books. So no thank you.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's the same issue with Lovecraft. He was an out and out racist and no nice person. Sure we can stop reading his work, but do we stop reading other books based on Lovecraft's work? That is a tough question.

It's a tough question for you. Me, I happily read everything I want to read, no matter who the author is.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Are these books written because the author's feel women are not as good as men or is that just the way they write? That to me is a big difference.

Most men before the late 20th century felt women were inferior to men. Should we stop reading every male writer before that time?

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I say we don't read the works of others based on Lovecraft's work if we should read Lovecraft before the other works in order to get more out the other works. Because that means the newer books are kindle of forcing us to read Lovecraft in order ot get the most out of the newer books. So no thank you.

I'm not really sure what you're saying here, but I'll take a stab at it.

Most of the works that are in the same universe that Lovecraft made don't require you to have read any Lovecraft. I'd actually be surprised if any really do. You might get more from the second hand works if you'd read Lovecraft, but you could probably get through everything having read wikipedia entries for his work. And if folks are going to object to even that, well I think we'd have to agree to disagree at that point.