14 Authors you should never read, says Buzzfeed

My problem with this is to me, I only know (for example) William S. Burrows was of the Tea Party. Particularly if I'm being told his position through a second hand source, there is no way to know for sure what his beliefs are because while most people may be honest, there is always that one person that may be slightly less than honest.

With Card it's one thing, because there isn't any doubt about how he feels. But with a dead person you won't ever meet them anyway unless you mysteriously found the ability to have clairvoyance, and thus I would be refusing to buy based on a position I would not even be certain of.

Even when they aren't dead, the information itself (unless the author himself is removing all doubt by a rally), could just as easily be coming from an angry divorced wife.

Hence I don't find myself comfortable with not purchasing based on their beliefs rather than their work itself.

Like I didn't know P.L. Travers was Theosophic. Certainly doens't change my opinion of her work. I'm personally not Theosophic, but I'm sure there are fine people that are.

JustSarah said:

Like I didn't know P.L. Travers was Theosophic. Certainly doens't change my opinion of her work. I'm personally not Theosophic, but I'm sure there are fine people that are.

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I'd never heard this term before, so I had to look it up... and I can't quite work out how it's on a par with the kinds of belief considered distasteful enough to prevent someone buying an author's books. I know you said it wouldn't change your opinion of her work, but that implies that it is a significant enough belief for you to make a point of that. I just wondered... why? Honestly asking because I don't know.

Kallithrix said:

I'd never heard this term before, so I had to look it up... and I can't quite work out how it's on a par with the kinds of belief considered distasteful enough to prevent someone buying an author's books. I know you said it wouldn't change your opinion of her work, but that implies that it is a significant enough belief for you to make a point of that. I just wondered... why? Honestly asking because I don't know.

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I'm with Kalli on this one. Why? To me it seems like a clear strawman, a "I can choose not read someone's work for any reason, but that doesn't make it right of me to do so" type of thing if you will. I'm not seeing the connection between the two things, since I personally draw the line at people's rights to their spiritual beliefs when they start to think it ok to dictate my life by their path.

Albedo > the point I was making seems to have been lost, so let me rephrase.

Saying not only that the people who do not share your moral point of view are objectively wrong, but that they know they are wrong, that they are consciously insincere in their beliefs, that the only way they'd be sincere in those beliefs is to suffer from a pathological lack of empathy…

…is exactly the kind of things that would be said by someone who is unable to emphatise with people who think differently, someone who cannot conceive different values as being the product of rational thinking, but necessarily as that of insincerity or insanity.

I won't presume to understand what you are really thinking and feeling, but your expressed words give the impression of a huge level of double standard and moral myopia.

Slavery is not dead, nor rape and pillage, nor the abuse and suppression of women. Too many people today don't have the values that "we" have.

I'd like to think that people in the future will shudder to read what people are writing now (and, much more, what people are doing), but I'm afraid that's being too optimistic re human nature.

JustSarah said:

My problem with this is to me, I only know (for example) William S. Burrows was of the Tea Party. Particularly if I'm being told his position through a second hand source, there is no way to know for sure what his beliefs are because while most people may be honest, there is always that one person that may be slightly less than honest.

With Card it's one thing, because there isn't any doubt about how he feels. But with a dead person you won't ever meet them anyway unless you mysteriously found the ability to have clairvoyance, and thus I would be refusing to buy based on a position I would not even be certain of.

Even when they aren't dead, the information itself (unless the author himself is removing all doubt by a rally), could just as easily be coming from an angry divorced wife.

Hence I don't find myself comfortable with not purchasing based on their beliefs rather than their work itself.

Like I didn't know P.L. Travers was Theosophic. Certainly doens't change my opinion of her work. I'm personally not Theosophic, but I'm sure there are fine people that are.

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I have to agree with you. Someone being part of the Tea Party doesn't bother me, any more than someone being part of the Democratic or Republican party, other than to show me that (in my opinion) they are somewhat capable of breaking out of the herd.
Card's beliefs are based on his religious followings, and he's not calling for stoning or such, so I have no issue with that.
There's not a lot of authors I simply refuse to touch their work. For example, I won't touch anything by King.

TheNighSwan said:

Albedo > the point I was making seems to have been lost, so let me rephrase.

Saying not only that the people who do not share your moral point of view are objectively wrong, but that they know they are wrong, that they are consciously insincere in their beliefs, that the only way they'd be sincere in those beliefs is to suffer from a pathological lack of empathy…

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I'm probably not making myself clear either. I'm not saying the Grandpa Racists of history knew they were wrong and were insincere or hypocritical. I'm saying they should have known. Looking at another's suffering and feeling it along side them should be innate. That most of them were able to suppress the empathetic instinct and be utter shits to each other anyway is a great tragedy, but that's a litany we have all heard now so I won't harp on it further.

…is exactly the kind of things that would be said by someone who is unable to emphatise with people who think differently, someone who cannot conceive different values as being the product of rational thinking, but necessarily as that of insincerity or insanity.

I won't presume to understand what you are really thinking and feeling, but your expressed words give the impression of a huge level of double standard and moral myopia.

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This conversation is jumping around a fair bit. I think it's a bit unfair I have to defend myself against charges of lacking empathy, now (and I've accused exactly noone of insincerity or insanity), so I'm going to go back to the beginning. Here are some statements that until this thread I didn't think were that controversial. Here is where I'm coming from.

1. History sucks.

Really. Show me a period -- post the advent of societies bigger than small bands of hunter-gatherers, and prior to contemporary technological civilisation where hyperabundance has more or less vastly improved the standards of everyone's lives -- where life for the majority, those not part of the elite, or the priestly class, or the gentry, was anything other than nasty, brutish and shite. Find one, and I'll show you a period where the hagiographers were telling porky pies.

2. The past has no moral lessons to deliver, other than to illustrate abject horror.

Yeah, there's been joy, great art, great architecture (sometimes not even involving the deaths of thousands of slaves!), and inspiring stories of endeavour. But all of that kind of loses its lustre when you consider that for most of history, we've regarded that time we crossed over into the next valley, slaughtered an entire village and piled their heads in the town square as a fun bedtime story, not an indelible stain.

3. Down with society/I am an edgy thirteen year old.

I've got no respect for society, largely because of the above. Individuals, yes. Cultures, yes. But fuck any societies -- as in the combined forces of economies, states, religions, and other power structures, and the interrelationships amongst them, that end up controlling those peoples and cultures -- that can't feed their own people without destroying others. Whoops, that's most of them. Societies are gigantic, impersonal meat grinders. They don't have feelings, so I'm not worried about causing hurt by saying this.

4. The gears in the grinder had eyes, and ears, and empathy.

Societies are gigantic, impersonal meat grinders, but they're made of people. Some of those people, like Grandpa Racist, may have not participated directly in the grinding, though they sure benefited from it. They might not even have realised what was going on. But the moment Grandpa Racist felt that twinge of empathy for his neighbour getting run out of town, and didn't connect the fucking dots and change his mind, or join a movement, or take up arms, like the people who throughout history have actually done so and changed the world for the better, he became part of the problem.

5. We're better.

Having rejected the entire history of human endeavour as a bit crap, let me just say I don't think we're perfect (and I agree that one day people will view Albedo as an uncouth barbarian), but we're doing pretty good. A world where fewer mothers watch their infant children die each passing year is an okay world, that's getting better! We're actually in a pretty good position, with our high energy diets, long lives, education, and global communications, to pass judgement on all those who came before us as being a bit crap. Try it. It's fun, and you can't hurt the feelings of the dead.



So yeah, back to my original point. 'They were products of their time' is a pretty poor excuse. Those times (doesn't matter which) were by and large unworthy of respect (see 1, 2, 3). Those people could have tried harder (see 4). We basically set the standard for decent human behaviour, at this point (see 5), and needn't accept poor excuses from dead people.

's all I'm saying.

Amadan said:

If some collapse brought down global civilization and sent us back even to the pre-industrial era, all social justice concerns would vanish tomorrow like a snowflake on a griddle.

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And this is why you should get in on the sanctimony with me while the going's good. I'm telling youse guys, it's fun.

You're missing out.

Amadan said:

If some collapse brought down global civilization and sent us back even to the pre-industrial era, all social justice concerns would vanish tomorrow like a snowflake on a griddle.

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Actually, a number of hunter-gatherer societies score a lot higher on the ol' egalitarianism than industrialized societies. There's a lot of theories about women being closer to the source of production and thus having more economic power, which are mostly only of interest to anthropologists, and it was about as idyllic as mud, but as a woman, in some ways you're way better off on the rights front being !Kung a hundred years ago than being Afghani today.

Mind you, we'd probably only be busted back to being horticulturalists, and that's a crappy place to be for everybody.

On the flipside, hunter-gatherer societies often have extremely high percentages of death in war, far beyond what any industrial society achieved in modern warfare. </completely off topic>

This discussion is a whole lot of odd.

There are very few authors who I would not hold in high esteem and very concerned that a whole lot of other do. This list has some very well known names: DC Scott, Adolf Hitler, and such.

There are a few works that are of great concern and I would never hold in high esteem and am concerned that others would: "White Man's Burden."

Then there are the authors who I hold with great concern over their current actions and how they are using the money they earn: Orson Scott Card.

Then there are the authors who were nasty but I have trouble finding in their work that nastiness. Ezra Pound comes to mind. Maybe his most nasty stuff has been excised like Celine.

Beyond that, the list assembled by Buzzfeed is one of the worst assembled lists one can put together.

To clarify: I meant I see simply having an opinion as differently from actively forcing your opinion.

Pre-Internet, unless someone were in the city T.S. or whoever resides, it's extremely unlikely anyone would know there opinion on anything.

I mean, all I know about Dahl is he was a WWII fighter pilot, had problems in school, and went through a divorce, and it's his second wife with a tight ceal over movie deals. For me what his opinion on stuff has no relevance to me. It's only became of Twitter (which I'm considering terminating), that someone's liberal opinions would spread like a wild fire.

Honestly even on Facebook I set posts to privacy that is meant to be a conversation between two friends.

And thus this list shouldn't even be taken seriously, as at the end of I have to ask the people who created it "well how do you know?"

This list isn't even putting Edgar Allen Poe on there, at least he was sending hateful reviews to the writers doorsteps. Among other unique treasures about his personality. Yet nobody really cares. The list is completely random it seems like.

JustSarah said:

To clarify: I meant I see simply having an opinion as differently from actively forcing your opinion.

Pre-Internet, unless someone were in the city T.S. or whoever resides, it's extremely unlikely anyone would know there opinion on anything.

I mean, all I know about Dahl is he was a WWII fighter pilot, had problems in school, and went through a divorce, and it's his second wife with a tight ceal over movie deals. For me what his opinion on stuff has no relevance to me. It's only became of Twitter (which I'm considering terminating), that someone's liberal opinions would spread like a wild fire.

Honestly even on Facebook I set posts to privacy that is meant to be a conversation between two friends.

And thus this list shouldn't even be taken seriously, as at the end of I have to ask the people who created it "well how do you know?"

This list isn't even putting Edgar Allen Poe on there, at least he was sending hateful reviews to the writers doorsteps. Among other unique treasures about his personality. Yet nobody really cares. The list is completely random it seems like.

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I'm going to back away from this, because it still to me looks like a very clear strawman argument.

I still remember the shock of learning one of my favourite authors from childhood had abused little girls. I remember meeting him when *I* was a little girl. His books are still around the house but I never read them now.

Looks like it's been echoed a lot, but still I'll drop my two cents and say it;

Just because an author is mean, crude or even a complete dirt bag in real life doesn't mean that they aren't good at what they do. Would I be less inclined to support them and get their book? Sure. Would it outright stop me from getting their book? Not necessarily, no.

Lillith1991 said:

I'm going to back away from this, because it still to me looks like a very clear strawman argument.

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Never said you thought that, I was speaking generally. Based on various people I've encountered.

JustSarah said:

Never said you thought that, I was speaking generally. Based on various people I've encountered.

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And in this age of having a ton of information at our fingertips, we can make an informed descison on who we choose to read. To me it appears like your catergorizing that as a bad thing. It isn't. What it does is allow those who don't want to read the work of someone like OSC who is on the board of an organization meant to curtail the rights of a group of people, to make the choice not to read his stuff. It also allows the man more traffic and sales from people who share his views. And those who don't know what the man's views are aren't being stopped from buying his work either, and neither are those that know and can separate the writer from his novels. It's all about choice, and I can't see how being able to choose what to read more easily is a bad thing.

I don't find anti-homosexual sentiment in Card's work. Quite the opposite. I actually think he's closeted and has learned to be "self-hating" because of his religious beliefs.

He has a scene in Ender's Game where two naked adolescent boys are fighting in the shower. And it's ripe with subtext. (This doesn't even touch his other works.)

It still doesn't justify what he does, imho.

I don't read Ayn Rand, though. Not because of her political agenda--but because her writing makes me want to stick my head in a meat grinder. Maybe it's more about the work for me. Is it worth reading? And does that "worth" outweigh a person's right to speak ill of other groups and campaign actively against specific human rights?

I don't know.

I came to Card before I learned about his issues with homosexuality, but wanted to learn what happened to some of his characters so I read on. Again, it's not comfortable to be in that position.

I think about that movie coming out--a remake of "Left Behind." And I find the whole thing laughable and have no intention of seeing it. The content is dodgy to me and the agenda is too heavy-handed. But, I don't imagine the writers and creators are saying, "Oh man, we have to care about what this agnostic non-Christian thinks. We should say we're sorry to them." They're probably shrugging and saying, "These people just don't get it. Oh well."

Eliot is one of the writers who has affected me the most. We all know he had issues and spent time in a sanitarium, and had an awful wife. It does not change the impact he had on modern poetry, or the effect his words have had on generations.

I much prefer to read what I choose, and look at the whole picture than rely on others' opionions on what I should and shouldn't read.


When my prof. read The Waste Land aloud to us over the course of a few classes, it was one of the points in my college education that influenced me profoundly and I will never forget.


He was struggling, but amazing. How do we have the courage to reject someone who is not in politically acceptable margins, but has contributed so much? He inspired generations, and those generations are not all too stupid to look at his life and frame of context. He did what no one else did before him in poetry. We all gained from his writing.