: Impact of views about author on buying book As a reader, I have found that when I disagree with an author's views or actions, this has influenced me not to buy their books. As an author,
As a reader, I have found that when I disagree with an author's views or actions, this has influenced me not to buy their books.
As an author, I therefore wonder whether readers generally view the work as completely independent from the author's personal views? And what if the book is semi-autobiographical? Do readers see the author as part-and-parcel with the book as it tells much about its creator?
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@Twilah982
A published book should be a totally independent entity from its creator.
However, as humans we can have a hard time to separate the authors’ views from his produced works.
For books where the author expresses his personal views, then yes a book could be judged in concert with the author stance.
For example Marion Zimmer Bradley, is a militant gay pagan feminist. That view is expressed in most of her books. If you are offended by her personal, sexual, political, or religious views, I can understand not reading her on that basis.
Lauren Ipsum: "I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia."
Orson Scott Card on the other hand, whatever his personal views, I don’t recall them being in his books.
What changed before and after, knowing some private thing about him, was his book altered, why should your perception of the author affect the books worth?
Also, for Americans of his generation "raging homophobia" was the norm, and still is in most of traditional America. Europe isn't that different, look at how Alan Turing was treated, for the crime ofbeing gay, by England.
Banning his books on that basis would be to say that since all European classic authors were raging anti-Semites, which was the normal accepted view at the time, all the literature before 1950’s should be banned. A variant is that all early American books should be censured as their authors accepted slavery as a matter of fact. There are countless variations; Greek classics should be banned because the authors liked to sodomize teenagers.
That position is obviously absurd. Now saying banning books that directly portray strong anti-Semite ideas like Dickens’s Oliver Twist, yes, I believe that people, children at least, should not be exposed to that filth.
I can see some people giving a pass to the classics because that was in the past…and that modern authors alone are concerned, because “they should know betterâ€. I think that’s non-sense.
After WW2 many authors found their books banned or censured because they were "Nazi sympathizers"…I find that hypocritical, in the early days most of Europe, including the British, and the western world in general, had strong anti-Semitic views, and were all Nazi sympathizers to some degree.
Take Leni Riefenstahl, her earily beautiful work had nothing to do with Nazi ideas, but she was an official party cinematographer and shot the Olympics which were used for Nazi propaganda. We wastedl one of the strongest visual artist of the 20 century because she was ostracized, marginalized, black-booked because of the association, and ended up shooting minor things in Africa.
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@Debbie451
I think an author's personal stance can absolutely be a deal-breaker. I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia. It would be an endorsement of his views. (So this would be a counter-example to @MarkBaker 's third point.)
I could never completely separate an artist and his/her art, if for no other reason than money talks. It's the same reason I won't shop at certain stores: I'm expressing my positions with my wallet. I won't have anything more to do with Woody Allen, OJ Simpson, or Roman Polanski for similar reasons.
If the book is semi-autobiographical, it's even more of a reason to join artist to work and to consider both when making the decision to read/watch/listen etc.
If you as a writer are concerned about your personal views offending your audience, well, have the courage of your convictions. If you really believe whatever it is, there will be those who agree with you and those who don't. Your compatriots will buy your book and your detractors won't. There's no way to say which side is bigger without knowing the controversy in question.
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