Saturday Book Discussion: Do Author!Fails Affect Your Reading Decisions?
Who am I to start a "Saturday Book Discussion"? Nobody -- start your own on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday if you like. ;)
So, literary Big Deal Nobel and Booker prize-winning Sir VS Naipaul (yeah, he even got a knighthood for his writing) says no woman is his literary equal.
Diana Athill, the editor/author whose writing he dismissed as "feminine tosh," laughs.
The Daily Beast says so what, people have known for years Naipaul is a racist, classist, whore-mongering, physically abusive dickbag, but he still got a knighthood and a Nobel prize.
Thus the discussion topic (and a poll!): does knowing an author is a raving loon or just a really unpleasant person affect your willingness to read and/or buy their books? Do you separate the artist from their work? Or does finding out that an author whose books you once adored is actually a nasty bigot forever taint their work in your mind?
Poll Author!Fails
My own opinion: I have a long enough TBR list as it is, so I don't mind filtering out the assholes. Hence I've never read anything by Orson Scott Card or John C. Wright, even though lots of people say their books are awesome and their bilious hatefulness is not apparent in their writing. However, I impose a statute of limitations that ends at the author's death. And I don't think there's much point trying to figure out which (if any) 19th century writers didn't have views that would be considered noxious today.
I've never read anything by VS Naipaul, and don't intend to, unless I get assigned something by the books1001 challenge -- in which case, I'll make sure I get the book used.
What do you all think?
ETA: The Guardian has put up the Naipaul Test: can you tell (as Naipaul claims to) whether an author is a man or a woman within a paragraph?
My results:
You scored 4 out of a possible 10
Sloppy thinking. You clearly need to read more books by men.
So, literary Big Deal Nobel and Booker prize-winning Sir VS Naipaul (yeah, he even got a knighthood for his writing) says no woman is his literary equal.
Diana Athill, the editor/author whose writing he dismissed as "feminine tosh," laughs.
The Daily Beast says so what, people have known for years Naipaul is a racist, classist, whore-mongering, physically abusive dickbag, but he still got a knighthood and a Nobel prize.
Thus the discussion topic (and a poll!): does knowing an author is a raving loon or just a really unpleasant person affect your willingness to read and/or buy their books? Do you separate the artist from their work? Or does finding out that an author whose books you once adored is actually a nasty bigot forever taint their work in your mind?
Poll Author!Fails
My own opinion: I have a long enough TBR list as it is, so I don't mind filtering out the assholes. Hence I've never read anything by Orson Scott Card or John C. Wright, even though lots of people say their books are awesome and their bilious hatefulness is not apparent in their writing. However, I impose a statute of limitations that ends at the author's death. And I don't think there's much point trying to figure out which (if any) 19th century writers didn't have views that would be considered noxious today.
I've never read anything by VS Naipaul, and don't intend to, unless I get assigned something by the books1001 challenge -- in which case, I'll make sure I get the book used.
What do you all think?
ETA: The Guardian has put up the Naipaul Test: can you tell (as Naipaul claims to) whether an author is a man or a woman within a paragraph?
My results:
You scored 4 out of a possible 10
Sloppy thinking. You clearly need to read more books by men.