: Re: To what extent should we fear giving offense? Recently we have seen multiple questions on various aspects of political correctness. They have sparked some measure of disagreement, which is what

@Kristi637

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I don't necessarily take any issue with books filled with very bad people doing very bad things. Nor do I expect that every author be personally a saint. But I do believe that every novel has a moral dimension, one independent of either the author's or the characters' personal traits. And for that reason, I do hold the writer responsible --not for the characters' choices, but for the authorial choices.

I could read and enjoy a book with a protagonist who is racist, or a murderer, or any range of other bad things. But not a book whose conscious or unconscious theme is that racism (or murder) is right and justified and good. In this, I'm not saying that the bad moral choices disqualify it from being good, but rather that I don't believe you can produce good writing from a bad moral place. Of course, as with anything, no work is purely good or bad, but the point is that bad moral authorial choices never improve a work. At best, they can be forgivable flaws in an otherwise admirable work (just like you can love your racist grandfather without loving the racism in him).

It's worth noting that this really has nothing to do with offensiveness. There are bland tepid works that offend me entirely because they take the safest possible route. I still consider them morally bad even if no character in them ever does anything remotely worthy of reproach. The author has committed the "crime" of wasting the reader's time with inauthentic pandering.

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