Reading books by bigots.

Now that's a good point, El Mac. Though I personally probably wouldn't boycott the actual author, I may well boycott the publisher if they made charitable donations that I objected to strongly enough. That would, of course, be an indirect boycott of the author as well.
 
I responded to this and will not further derail the thread.
If the entire premise you are operating under is wrong, that needs to be addressed before further discussion is taken.
 
Mistaking an entire people for one state where some of those people live, may be unfortunate, but at least displays your poor analysis in stark clarity.

I kind of find my desire to read any other Card books somewhat poisoned by what I've heard of him, I guess it depends how loudly they shout.

I hate North Korea, but I do not mind any works I would make being published in North Korea (though it's unlikely it will be allowed). Let alone Israel, which government is not even half as bad as that of DPRK. I don't see why anyone should punish the inhabitants of a state whose views you do not agree with.

Fiction which is political tends to be bad anyway. In my view even a slight focus on specific (as in polarising for example) politics can make art be worse than it would have been without it.

Iirc the only text which was centered on a political premise (the rise of nazism) and had some degree of interest for me, was Ionesco's "The Rhinoceros". But i only read it once, when i was 17. It is a massive play anyway, and i recall that one reviewer of it in Paris in the 60s had commented that "During the impossibly long three hours that the play took to finally end, mr Ionesco unfortunately convinced us that he is able to think" :)

Almost all fiction is to a strong extent political. You're not going to tell LOTR, 1984, Flatland, The Trial or any of the works by Lovecraft are free of political influence. The key is subtility. It must not be too overt as in "[X Political movement] is awesome", unless you want satirise it of course.
 
I'm not sure what sort of political message can be drawn out of LOTR besides a generic romanticizing about English rural life.
 
Monarchies (Aragorn) are better than dictatorships (Sauron) springs to mind. ;)
 
I'm not sure what sort of political message can be drawn out of LOTR besides a generic romanticizing about English rural life.

Well, you basically said it yourself.
 
Well, you basically said it yourself.
Still not really seeing how that forms a political message on any meaningful level. It would be like saying "Pet the Rabbit" had a political message in that it encourages children to respect animals.
 
I'm not sure what sort of political message can be drawn out of LOTR besides a generic romanticizing about English rural life.

Also, men from the east are evil and uncivilised and your personality is mostly determined by your race.
 
I hate North Korea, but I do not mind any works I would make being published in North Korea (though it's unlikely it will be allowed). Let alone Israel, which government is not even half as bad as that of DPRK. I don't see why anyone should punish the inhabitants of a state whose views you do not agree with.



Almost all fiction is to a strong extent political. You're not going to tell LOTR, 1984, Flatland, The Trial or any of the works by Lovecraft are free of political influence. The key is subtility. It must not be too overt as in "[X Political movement] is awesome", unless you want satirise it of course.

I haven't read 1984 (hated the first pages, maybe the only Greek translation which exists as a monopoly - ;) - sucks way too much) but i did like Animal Farm despite being very political (i repressed that...).

Haven't read Lotr or other such works (only a bit of the hobbit, which i disliked, but it was a children's tale anyway).

But i do have an opinion about The Trial (Kafka) or Lovecraft's works, and i don't agree they are political. The Trial (given who wrote it) is most certainly (to a huge extent) a large allegory on some "invisible internal courtroom" that Kafka mentioned in his diary a number of times including the period he was writing the Trial.
Lovecraft might have some political themes, but they are either very secondary, or they are not conscious. No work of his (fictional) has any theme about politics, despite the motif of lower groups of people getting sucked into the cults (but even the protagonist of Shadow over Innsmouth suffers the same fate) :)
 
Well, most political themes in fiction are indeed presented in a rather underhand way, but yes, they are there. Note that these are usually unconscious decisions.
 
Reading books by bigots.
...
I didn't want to read any of Iain M. Banks' books because of his refusal to let them be sold in Israel.
unimpressed.gif
 
Boycotting an entire people is bigoted. Nice thread derail.

You are free to hold that opinion and I am free to think that it is hilarious. And you did include that tidbit in the OP, so I responded to it - if you didn't want people talking about it you shouldn't have done that.

Pathfinder was good, although it has plenty of flaws. Ruins was even better.

The last good book of his I read was Pastwatch: the redemption of C. Columbus. That was a really good book. Empire was so incredibly bad though that it just turned me off him for a while. It's like he didn't even try. That and he rubs me the wrong way anyway with his hateful rhetoric about homosexuals. I'd read another book again, but I have no idea what happened with Empire. It was horrible.
 
The last good book of his I read was Pastwatch: the redemption of C. Columbus. That was a really good book. Empire was so incredibly bad though that it just turned me off him for a while. It's like he didn't even try. That and he rubs me the wrong way anyway with his hateful rhetoric about homosexuals. I'd read another book again, but I have no idea what happened with Empire. It was horrible.

Better stay away, moreso if the next work is called Rome II ;)
 
Also, men from the east are evil and uncivilised and your personality is mostly determined by your race.

Yeah, Tolkien's work has a fair few...objectionable...ideas behind it. The obsession with racial purity and bloodlines. The quite blatant racism - orcs are a clear stand in for turkish/mongoloid people (confirmed in some of Tolkien's letters), while dark-skinned men are all evil and Dwarves are a thinly veiled (predominantly negative) stereotype of Jews. Women are almost exclusively objectified - even the one vaguely positive example ends up being forced to be a dutiful wife in the epilogue.

Now, I'm not saying he used the books to push his views in the way of, say, Rand, but likely they simply reflect his beliefs and prejudices.
 
^Tolkien is just not a good author :/

Dunsany (a contemporary, and known before Tolkien) is massively better in my view, although i only like a few of his stories (at least five of them, and his flash-fiction tends to be great as well).
 
Yeah, Tolkien's work has a fair few...objectionable...ideas behind it. The obsession with racial purity and bloodlines. The quite blatant racism - orcs are a clear stand in for turkish/mongoloid people (confirmed in some of Tolkien's letters), while dark-skinned men are all evil and Dwarves are a thinly veiled (predominantly negative) stereotype of Jews. Women are almost exclusively objectified - even the one vaguely positive example ends up being forced to be a dutiful wife in the epilogue.

Now, I'm not saying he used the books to push his views in the way of, say, Rand, but likely they simply reflect his beliefs and prejudices.
There is little actual basis for these allegations about Tolkien. He even made it quite clear that LOTR should not be viewed as an allegory:

Racism in Tolkien's Works

In the Foreword to the revised edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien cautioned strongly against viewing it as an allegory, saying that he disliked allegory himself. Furthermore, according to his own claims, Tolkien denounced Hitler, Nazi beliefs, "race-doctrine" and apartheid and praised the Jews, calling them a "gifted people" (see below).

"I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White."

― From a valedictory address to the University of Oxford in 1959

Is It True There is Racism in The Lord of the Rings?

ANSWER: Yes, it is true there is racism in The Lord of the Rings. However, many people who ask this question may really mean to ask, “Is The Lord of the Rings a racist work of fiction?” Although some people claim that is the case they are mistaken for J.R.R. Tolkien embedded numerous examples of the folly of racism in The Lord of the Rings. In other words, it would be difficult for any other modern work of fiction to be as anti-racist as The Lord of the Rings.

Among the numerous misconceptions that are used to condemn The Lord of the Rings for racism are:

All the “good” peoples are light-skinned

All the “evil” peoples are dark-skinned

All the Dunedain are blond-haired, blue-eyed

The Elves are portrayed as being incapable of doing evil

The Northmen are portrayed as being a “superior race”

The Orcs are depicted as completely evil, having no worthy qualities

The story includes racist caricatures like “black men like half-trolls”

I cannot list all of the false statements similar to the above that are used to condemn The Lord of the Rings as a racist story, but these are some of the most favored accusations. Let’s take a look at them.
 
What a surprise Forma, you didn't respond directly to my post at all. You just, as usual, pulled out a website that points sort of in the vague direction.

I didn't claim that "all good people are light-skinned" - in fact the claim I would have about good people is that they can only be so if they are of proper bloodlines. It's not a matter of "white people are good", but it is a matter of certain races, certain bloodlines being good and others evil as inherent traits. Even among the Hobbits, those with good bloodlines are good, and vice-versa. Their "good" traits come from their bloodlines. Sam is the lone exception, falling into the "loyal servant" role, but even then, that continues the theme: he's of lesser blood so he's the servant. Those who have mixed their blood are fallen - witness how the Gondoreans lost the nobility and purity of their Numenorean ancestors when they dared mix their blood with "lesser" men. Aragorn is the king because, well, because his bloodline is purer than anyone else's, whereas those of more dilute heritage are easy prey for the wiles of the Enemy and undeserving of being royalty.

Did I ever claim that only black people are evil? No, again I didn't. Where people are described as black, they are evil. That says nothing about whether other people can be evil.

Orcs may have some redeeming features, but they are still portrayed as savage and brutish. And given that they are clearly meant to be Turkic/Mongol peoples - not just in appearance (as explicitly stated by Tolkein, who describes "Mongol-types" as "unlovely"), but in language and culture (what little remains under the brutish caricature), it's kinda hard to avoid the impression that this was deliberate.

Maybe he liked Jews, but the dwarves are pretty much spot on for the typical anti-semitic stereotypes: greedy to the extreme, insular, hostile to outsiders. Even to the point where they have been exiled form a homeland now controlled by the evil eastern types. Tolkien even admitted that he thinks of the dwarves like Jews...

And you know, maybe he wasn't racist. Or maybe he changed. Maybe it was accidental, maybe not. Maybe I'm reading far more into this than he intended. But the undertones certainly seem to be there in LotR and his supporting writings.

And I notice you didn't even address the sexism point at all. Women are objects, to be claimed, to be put on a pedestal. Nothing more. Sure, he might not be alone in this, many other authors are similar. But that doesn't mean it's not reprehensible.
 
I've heard that his Alvin Maker series was pretty bad... although I'd be interested to hear what he did to you. (I also don't know what "NonCon" is; Google doesn't turn up anything.)
NonCon is the name of an annual regional science fiction convention held in Alberta in the '80s and '90s. Most were held in Edmonton, some in Calgary, once in Red Deer (I was on the concom for that one) and once in Banff. As with the other Alberta-based SF conventions, the emphasis was on writing, editing, fandom, and art, so none of the guests were ever actors. Thanks to NonCon and Con-Version (the convention that started when some of the NonCon people based in Calgary decided to have a summer con instead of Thanksgiving weekend, like NonCon), I've had the pleasure (or displeasure as the case may be) of meeting quite a few authors. My personal favorites were Frederik Pohl (a legend among SF writers, editors, and fans), Alan Dean Foster (extremely friendly; I've emailed with him a few times over the years), and Robert Silverberg (was GoH twice, always willing to chat and answer questions; he has a Yahoo! group I'm a member of).

I normally don't mind an author's politics- but what if an author had declared that he would be "boycotting" people of your beliefs/political affiliation/nationality and not selling his books to you? Would you read him, even then?
I don't see how an author could ever hope to enforce that 100%. There is this thing called a "used book store", and another thing called "eBay." If people are really serious about getting somebody's books, they will find a way.

That said, if any author decided he didn't want to sell to a non-Conservative Albertan, I'd probably say, fine. You obviously don't want or need my support, and I'll shout it from the literary rooftops what a jerk you are.

Kyriakos said:
That said, one of the most boring and badly written books i read (most of) was that one attributed to Anne Frank. The book is not good at all and it is a farce that politics made it some sort of 'classic'.
Are you referring to The Diary of Anne Frank? :huh:

Normally I separate someone's work from his/her person ...
I've managed to do that with some actors. I may despise Mel Gibson's attitudes and open bigotry, but he can act, and I bought the DVD of his Hamlet movie with full knowledge that he's really not a nice person.

Are you ever going to tell us what orson Scott card did to you? I'm dying of curiosity.
Time zones... while a lot of other people were posting in this thread, I was still asleep. ;)

It wasn't what he did, so much as what he wrote when I asked him to autograph the book I'd brought along. It was a jerk thing to write in somebody's book, and his general attitude and body language were rather off-putting. No, I am not going to say what he wrote. It was a personal remark that was inappropriate.


On the matter of boycotting: There are a couple of Star Trek authors I am boycotting, based on interactions with them on TrekBBS. No professional author gets to act like a jerk or swear at me and then expect I'm going to buy his books.
 
Are you referring to The Diary of Anne Frank? :huh:

^No, i meant her longer work on the existential crisis of a man who digs a massive system of corridors below a forest and then cannot allow himself to stay inside that burrow out of a collection of fears that drive him to harmful compromise and anxiety.
 
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