Saturday Book Discussion: Boycotting Authors

[inverarity]

Comments

[conuly]

For the first question, I'm about evenly between "there are a few things I can't forgive..." and "I try to avoid giving money to authors who offend

[little_e_]

Mormons are probably growing as a % of Christians (and whites) in the US due to having lots of kids, and they tend to be fairly well-educated and socially organized.

[inverarity]

Well, Mormons have been around since 1830... though I think it is only since the 80s that the LDS church has become politically prominent.

[morningapproach]

I am torn. As a teacher, and as a hopeful future children's librarian, there are a lot of really good messages & lessons in books that are independent from the way an author thinks or feels. If I stopped buying or reading every single piece of literature that anyone found offensive, my classroom library would be bare except for random Clifford books, and even then I am sure some PETA parentw ould stand up and say something.

Books can have a message. Ender's Game is an amazing example of a message that the text makes, and that I feel strongly about children & teens learning from. I don't agree with Card's viewpoints, but that's the beauty of free speech. He is allowed to think what he likes, and I am allowed to think what I like. Generally, I will support the authors whose books I like. Their world view doesn't usually come into play when it comes to literature for me.

[marycatelli]

I must observe that after the Boston Marathon bombing, Gaiman asked people who objected to his wife's screed on it to not buy his books.

[inverarity]

Oh dear. Not actually being an Amanda Palmer fan, you just made me Google that.

She is... special, ain't she?

That said, I don't care what Gaiman says about whether or not I should buy his books either.

[little_e_]

Are we talking about that poem? It was kind of dumb, but it doesn't really seem worth commenting on. I mean, I've written a bunch of bad poetry, too. Thank goodness no one cares about my bad poetry :P

[marycatelli]

Yeah, well, Gaiman cared enough to explicitly say that folks who didn't like it shouldn't buy his works.

The author's asking you to boycott him means he can't complain if you do.

[leaf_kunoichi]

I listen to the message in the text not what the author is saying/doing outside of the book. The text is what is going to exist after they are gone. The text is what people look back on. I really don't care is an author is spouting off against negative reviewers on Amazon or Goodreads other than to stop and laugh. I don't care what the author, or their spouse, is doing.

I love the Ender's Game series. If you read it and knew nothing of Card, you wouldn't know his opinions of same sex marriage or homosexuality in general. Now, if the series itself was filled with these views, I wouldn't be a fan.

[marycatelli]

There is the aspect that if you know the views already and go into the text primed to see them, what used to be hidden often becomes conspicuous.

[leaf_kunoichi]

And there are times that a reader is biased against an author and read too much into the text to find things that aren't there.

[little_e_]

I read fuckin' everything. I value knowing what's in other people's heads, whether I agree with them or not. I read far left publications like the Stanford Static, and I read far right shit like the publicly accessible threads on Stormfront. I just finished a book about elderly Russians' memories of Lenin and Stalin and the Russian Revolution. Some of these folks think Stalin was a good leader, that he acted appropriately.

The Left in the US and other parts of the West has gone full-on Fascist lately, and it disturbs me greatly. This is a much bigger problem, IMO, than authors expressing dumb ideas, which individual humans have always done. I really don't like where I see all of this going. I don't like seeing liberals with unconventional ideas attacked and ostracized by other liberals for not being sufficiently in lock step with the others. I am not happy about a world where the most vocal arguments for Freedom of Speech and Conscience I'm hearing are coming from the Far Right (which I distrust on ad hom grounds

[haikujaguar]

This, so much this. Can I give you internet cookies? All the internet cookies?

[jordan179]

When Orson Scott Card came to Vericon (a sci fi con hosted by people I used to know,) there was great controversy among the org's members about whether or not LGBT attendees would feel safe at the con with Card there ...

That's pretty funny -- and pretty insulting to the LGBT attendees. Why wouldn't they "feel safe" around Orson Scott Card? Has he started leaping at gays and savaging them with his teeth, or something?

Feel ANGRY TOWARD Card -- now that I could understand. But safe? Are gays and lesbians sensitive little flowers who wilt in the absence of universal approval? The gay and lesbian people I've known personally were hardly so delicate!

[little_e_]

I am not particularly good at predicting or understanding how people will feel, especially when politics and identity get wrapped up together, and so can't really say if people would really have felt safe or unsafe or what. Some of the folks organizing such things were (are) LGBT, and I would certainly trust their self-reported emotions. I suspect, however, that the move was less about literal, physical or mental safety than about a way for the organization (or certain members in it,) to express the view that Card's views are hurtful and that social action must be taken to counteract them, and to provide physical evidence at the convention for the group's overall support for LGBTQ folks, despite Card's presence.

In a sense, we could take it as an attempt to re-establish neutrality, by having both sides represented, except that I don't recall any other attempts to neutralize any other particular guest's political opinions (nor was Card likely to get into it at the con.)