Another writer – Susana Imaginario – who I follow on X asked recently how much readers let their liking (or dislike) of an author affect their buying of the author’s books.
Now: I used to try and separate the artist from the artwork. I’ve given up. I didn’t like MZB – long before I knew the backstory. I found something about Piers Anthony was giving me the cald grue long before I heard any rumors… I found Harlan Ellison’s writing telling me I wouldn’t like him long before I heard anything about his personality at cons. Niel Gaiman was another I just couldn’t get into. On the other hand, having been lucky enough to meet David Weber, Lois Budjold, and Larry Niven… they were like their books. I like their books, and I could see where it came from.
So: my answer is ‘yes’, I would buy someone I knew and liked. Not everyone I know and like is a good writer. Why not? You ought to live up to my expectations. I know – in the technical sense – that some of those I have met or had dealings with online, that I did not like, are in fact pretty ‘good’. They are popular, successful – and I assume appeal to people who don’t feel they’re getting a character study of the writer when they read their books, or to whom the things that set me off are just fine. Hey that’s fine by me. I don’t like Brussel sprouts, but you are welcome to love them. In fact, you can have mine. I’m generous like that.
Maybe I’m the writer with the equivalent of written BO reflecting my natural simian bouquet, that no-one wants to tell that he smells… I have been told, with some amusement, that my books read… just like I was talking to you. The same bad jokes I assume. It’s a thin line between a Mary Sue and just some of your character, outlook on life, and experience leaking into a book.
I don’t know. Am I the sort of person you would expect to write the sort of books that I do write? And do you let the impression you have of the author (especially in these social media days) color your buying or your reading?
Mad Genius Club 
22 responses to “How much leaks into your book?”
*wags paw* Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Older authors from different times and places? Not really. MZB’s stuff was great when I was a teen, but going back I got a strange vibe and stopped reading. That was before I learned about everything else. Ditto GRRM – some of his short stories are great, but everything had an odd sense that made me uncomfortable, so I quit. I have not read the novels, and do not want to.
If the author has flat-out said in public that he doesn’t want people like me (whatever that means) reading his book, I won’t spend the money.
Sometimes I can separate the writer from the writing, but many times it carries over into their work. Dalton Trumbo was a repugnant Stalinist but wrote Spartacus and Lonely are the Brave. How he did that, given his beliefs, I don’t know, but I truly admired his work. The man, not at all.
MZB, I never read and was not impressed when I met her at a Con (even though my wife saved her from choking during a lecture while everybody else just sat there watching her gag).
Harlan famously played an asshole in public. I hear he was a nice guy to his friends, but had built an aggressive, crusty shell around himself. There was one very revealing episode of the New Twilight Zone where the main character as an adult is mysteriously transported back in time and meets and befriends himself as a boy becoming the boy’s only friend. But then the character finds himself slowly fading away from the earlier timeline, and he, as his boy self, becomes totally embittered at life by what he sees as he universe betraying his only happiness by taking away the only person who understands him. I actually blurted out to my wife, “My god, he’s writing about himself!” Unfortunately his cynicism and bitterness about life frequently transferred to the page (see I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream) powerfully and repulsively.
So the answer is that I can enjoy a writer’s work while despising the writer, but it’s a rare occasion where the writer’s persona doesn’t transfer to his works.
I haven’t paid attention to Lonely Are The Brave, but my dad characterizes Spartacus as fanfic about what Trumbo thought communist revolutionaries were like.
Lonely Are the Brave is a movie from an Edward Abbey book starring Kirk Douglas as a lone cowpoke who hatches a plot to get his lifelong buddy out of jail by getting himself arrested for drunk and disorderly. The plan goes wrong, but Douglas’ character escapes. His buddy won’t leave because he’s protesting the draft, but that was the only leftwing message in the movie, and it was pretty minor. The bulk of the movie is about Kirk Douglas trying to escape the manhunt (and save his horse). It has a stellar cast featuring Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, William Schallert, Caroll O’Connor, and even an uncredited Bill Bixby in, what I believe was his first screen role.
If you like stories set in the Southwest, I highly recommend it.
Well, since I haven’t met Dave irl, yet, I can’t tell if he meets my expectations as a person from his writing. (Although I suspect he’s probably a great guy to invite to a barbeque and share drinks with.)
Marion Zimmer Bradley turning out to be the poster child for a real-life horror story goes a long way in explaining a myriad of uncomfortable things that show up in a lot of her books. Once you know it, you can’t unsee it. While I don’t want to burn all her books, I sometimes wish I could re-write them. And I have to wonder just how many people alive today were, warped, by what they read in her stories, and others of similar nature.
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The 1st and 2nd Amendments of the U.S. Constitution bear an interesting relationship with each other. The first protects the right to keep and use speech as a weapon in the immaterial world, while the second protects the right to keep and bear arms as a weapon in world of matter and energy. Censorship should be a personal choice, not a government imposed one. Let the marketplace of cold cash determine if someone’s words deserve to be spread and let the same bury that which is harmful. Because words, spoken or printed, while they don’t break bones, can wound and injure when used irresponsibly or with malice.
I’ve had no trouble not paying money to bad ‘uns. But some of them do project who they are. There was one MZB book, can’t remember the title but I chucked it and was done with her.
But whoever said that you write like you talk meant it as a compliment. Or should have meant it as a compliment. Your books are like friends.
Thank you. Actually, it was quite funny, the person is a friend, she merely read the book because I wrote it. She doesn’t read sf/fantasy and did not expect to enjoy it. She did, however, enjoy and said the reason was not that she now sf/fantasy but because she thought it was like talking to me. I maintain that might add appeal but that some sf/fantasy can appeal to almost anyone. 🙂
I’ve had no trouble not paying money to bad ‘uns. But some of them do project who they are. There was one MZB book, can’t remember the title but I chucked it and was done with her.
But whoever said that you write like you talk meant it as a compliment. Or should have meant it as a compliment. Your books are like friends.
My experience has been that the ordinary bell curve of human failings doesn’t really come out that strongly in people’s writings. Tolkien was an academic goldbricker whose peers couldn’t rely on him for joint projects. Lewis may have had an affair with an older woman. Sayers definitely had a child out of wedlock. The MZBs, Eddingses, and so on, are more out at the far end of the bell curve of human bad behavior.
MZB is pretty much the cliff case (maybe Eddings too…don’t know details, don’t want to at this point).
And the thing is the MZB revelations had collateral damage. I wonder about Diana Paxson (who has denied knowing). More broadly it makes me wonder if the bad behavior I saw in the group they both helped found is more baked in than any group attracts the range of the human bell curve with a touch of “groups of outsiders attract predators for multiple reasons”.
The MZB revelations even put me more on guard on how I’m perceived in certain environments where I’m likely to be out of step age wise. Certainly it affected how I went to Belegarth the first time.
The Eddingses were convicted of physical (no accusation of sexual) abuse of foster children and served jail time, all before they started writing fantasy. (Somewhat swept under the rug at the time because he was a cillege professor). You could make the case the case that they didn’t deserve to be lumped in with MZB, who was apparently guilty of far worse and could not remotely be said to have paid her debt to society.
If you’re talking about the SCA, I can remember hearing about some MZB-esque nastiness happening at a local group called the Shire of Eisenthal. I left years before it all came out; I was given the feeling that I was unwelcome. I suspect I should be glad for that.
I think the only writer I’ve somewhat regularly read, who I know I’d somewhat dislike personally was Eric Flint (the old Bar stuff being my only interactions with him, and of those, very few were “personal”). Granted, very few of his single author stories/books was well liked by me, but there’s been quite a few authors I’ve attempted to read and bounced, to later find were the sort of human I’d never buy even if they were the “greatest writer of all time”. Then again, there are quite a few I’ve read i know nothing about. so. the list might be longer, and I just don’t know.
I read MZB as a teen. Nothing struck me as off, but that could be age. There is only one book I’ve even thought about going back to read again, House Between the Worlds but I never have (Mists is in my “to read” pile as Arthur based).
I have enjoyed some Ellison and there is a huge difference between being a child molester and just an ass (I’m quite good at the later myself although I doubt as much as Harlan) so it didn’t affect me reading or watching his material as much (although I think sometimes he missed valid criticism based on it, see his inability to understand why City on the Edge of Forever is better with the ending it has instead of his). I think he leaks through.
A lot of a writer leaks through from what I’ve seen. I read several people I follow here and adjacent places and I catch myself saying “yeah, that’s Sarah/Cedar/Dave/Peter/Larry” when I read the books. I don’t think it is possible not for that to do so.
But, it’s also possible to keep the things that drive people away out of it. I know Lawrence Block, easily my favorite detective writer, is a leftie but until the TDS showed up it wasn’t so there that it overwhelmed things. Even then, it has done so not in his fiction but his Twitter. I catch KKR’s politics in some of her shorts and on occasion it makes them unenjoyable, mainly by leading her to write stuff that is trite and beneath her abilities. Her husband Dean was a big friend of Ellison and you can tell they have similar personalities (I also suspect his is more RAH arrogance than Ellison though) but he keeps the public part of him more neutral (if you take his writing workshops it comes out more, but I think it helps there).
I guess my conclusion is while the writer shows through and we’re likely to enjoy people who match, or at least, wouldn’t annoy us in person, really good writers keep that in check somewhat in their fiction.
Really smart writers keep it in check outside of their fiction.
TruDat! Harlan was a complicated character and really caused himself more grief than good by the way he went about dealing with things. He would be constantly storming out and quitting projects for things he could have just finessed around. He actually supported Ted Sturgeon (one of the gentlest and kindest persons who ever lived) financially when Sturgeon was broke.
Harlan’s fit of pique at Star Trek for City on the Edge of Forever was an absurd overreaction, and his copyright infringement complaint against James Cameron was totally bogus. You can’t copyright ideas, but he got the studio to pay him to go away with money and a credit that Cameron always resented. He also claimed to have slept with thousands of woman, but had never cheated when he was married. Complicated man.
In general, I don’t notice these things, although I did bounce off of a couple of those you mentioned. Piers Anthony just never managed to get my interest, and Gaiman’s stuff honestly stuck me as pointless.
Bradley, though, could be pretty explicit at times. The Mists of Avalon actually said that the moral of the story of Morgan La Fey’s life was that incest was a gift from the Gods, and that any attempt to restrict it was Christian tyranny (it was in the middle of the third part of a nine hundred page slog, which is probably why no one called her out on it). The Darkover short story “The Shadow” had its main character realize that he needed not only to forgive his rapist but to embrace the man as a substitute father—because by not doing that, he was hurting the rapist’s feelings. I honestly don’t know how anyone could read some of that stuff and not pick up on the fact that there was something deeply morally twisted about this woman.
it depends.
The author of Dungeon Crawler Carl rather obviously leans Left pretty hard, but he reaches for the universal and tells a rollicking good yarn. I’ll buy his next book without hesitation.
If GRRM ever writes another book, though, there no way in hell I’m buying it. But I’d likely feel that way even if he wasn’t an asshole who hates me.
Now that I know, I don’t think I could ever buy anything from Clarke, Eddings, or Gaiman again. Even though they were once some of my favorites. (Helps that two are dead, and the other peaked twenty-odd years ago and fell off pretty hard since.)
I harbored an extreme dislike for the writing of MZB before I knew about her as a person, so not a good example.
i won’t read Scalzi anymore, but since he’s been falling off since his first book, and has been actively antagonizing anyone Right of Lenin, that’s hardly a surprise.
What I’ve found telling is comparing the hatred and vitriol Gaiman gets vs. J.K. Rowling.
There are a few authors who have made such asses of themselves via social media that I will never read their work. If I read and enjoyed an author before finding out they were a raging TDS leftist, I might continue reading their work. Otherwise, “don’t give money to people who hate you”.
Yes – once the nasty details came out, I couldn’t even begin to unsee all the bits in her books – and I had been a fan, had copies of them all. I had loved the Darkover series, because I discovered them a short time after coming off a year at a military posting in the Arctic, so I could totally relate to the military Terran personnel being assigned to a dim, cold, totally alien space… I even submitted a short story for one of her anthologies, but by the time I sent it in, she had revoked permission for other writers to gambol in her playground. May have been a lucky escape there…
I was so revolted when I did hear all about hers and her hubby’s abusive games – I took all the copies of her books off the shelves, and put them in a box … eventually donated the lot.
Other writers with unsavory personal lives … the first book of Samuel Delaney’s that read just gave me a mild ‘ick.’ Never read any others – and finding out about his own … nasty proclivities put him in the same category as MZB with me. I had rather liked John Scalzi’s first book – the one that he posted a chapter every day on his blog, when the blogosphere was new and young. I wouldn’t touch any of his books with a ten-foot pole now, since he has proved to be such a proggie a-hole.
As for the rest of the writer wokerati – if they have been flaming a-holes about their woke inclination, and basically told conservatives that they don’t want our money, and in fact would prefer that we all die screaming in a fire … well, I’ll oblige and take my money elsewhere.
I wonder sometimes if something was/is wrong with me as I can only ever recall reading three MZB books, one of which was a Darkover book that I didn’t like. The others were Hunters of the Red Moon, which I loved the battle scenes in, and Warrior Woman, which came off as a sleazy sword-and-planet romp that I enjoyed. But then I have no pretenses of being cultured. Back in the 80’s when I read it I was enjoying entertaining garbage like the ‘Adult Westerns’ from Zebra and William Johnstone’s lurid ”Devil’ series.
I have seen some really nasty stuff getting posted and sold in furry fandom, to the point where it’s sadly come to define it in the eyes of outsiders. The increasingly gross antics I hear of happening at furry conventions by people involved with some of this as creators or publishers or fans is unfortunately no surprise. That said the cons are starting to crack down on it due to fannish outrage.
But I miss the days when the fandom was defined by quality SF and fantasy like Wyman’s Xanadu, Steve Gallacci’s Albedo Anthropomorphics, and Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo.
As you get older, it gets easier to notice those things. Perhaps just practice. For a fairly innocuous one, in my twenties, I didn’t notice that H. Beam Piper put into Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen the chestnut about wars being fomented by armaments manufacturers.
Sometimes hearing about or meeting an author allows you to see their ideas in isolation and then more clearly in their work.
Yes.
The younger I was, by far the less discerning.
I was still paranoid young, but I did not have as many tools or experience to be discerning with.
I basically do not know about my taste, and sorting into the four bins. (good or bad person, and to my taste, and not to my taste are the categories whose intersections define the bins.)
Because I have read little fiction in recent years, and because I have not taken risks with my fiction reading, I do not have many items outside of good person/good story. However, this is clearly a sampling problem, and I do not have enough examples for a statistically valid conclusion.