Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Chuvok]

I've made a new rule for myself that I'm not going to try and learn about the authors I read.


Why, you ask?


Well, time and time again I find a good book that appeals to me, read it with pleasure, then go looking for other books the author has written. Eventually I look online to see who the author actually is... and almost always it seems I discover something about the author that is distasteful and lowers my opinion of them, and by proxy, their writing.

For example, a couple of years I read 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk. Surely, most people have seen the movie. The book is much better! Palahniuk... I figured he was a Slav of some sort, living in the US. The type of person who is very skeptical about culture, young-ish, average guy with something to say.

So, I do a Google search and find a website that appears to be the official Palahniuk site. I click on the forum, and what do I see as topic??? "Chuck Palahniuk is gay". Not just gay, but an Uber-homo!

Now, I don't really care if people are gay. I'm not gay. Live and let live. But when I enjoyed a book like 'Fight Club', which happens to be about a young man who dreams up an idealised male alter ego/friend.... well, discovering Palahniuk is gay made me wonder why he wrote the book. Was Tyler Durden a homosexual fantasy of some sort? At the time the book's lack of female characters (Marla Singer being a very weak character) was refreshing, with none of the typical male/female politics, sort of like going fishing with your father and brothers, no need to think about girlfriends or wives and mother for a few hours! But again, learning Palahniuk is gay ruined that. The book became a homosexual's way of maginalising women. One line of the book stands out; "I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need." of course not, if you're a gay author, you want men men men...



Another recent example is Orson Scott Card. The author best known for his 'Ender's Game' series. Again, I read a number of his books, enjoyed them a great deal, and found myself doing a Wikipedia search to see who he is. Turns out he's a rather nutty Mormon with some really foul conservative political views, and an ego the size of Siberia. So what? Well, again knowing who he is in real life taints his books for me. I don't want to read any more of an a**hole's books.


So, as I've said, my new rule is not to look-up authors. I'll just read their books (or listen to audio books) and pretend they are good people.

[JMO]

When I found out that my favorite ever carver line(and his style) was created by his editor, I was kind of sad.

[Poemer]

There are much better reasons to dislike Chuck Palahniuk's writing--like, for instance, the fact that he is a hack.

[HapKi]

If you had read Invisible Monsters first I'm sure you would have a different tune.

[Poemer]

[Koveras]

[Poemer]

I'm not familiar with him, but from the wiki description of his prose style, i'm curious now. How is is stuff?

What made you ask?

[Koveras]

[Poemer]

"certified classic" huh? "academic" lit is as full of fads as "pop" lit. I enjoy stuff that's good, not certified by someone else. So, you're not gonna catch me out that way

[Poemer]

It's also ironic that Chuck Palahniuk is my Thomas Clayton Wolfe for the purposes of weeding out people whose literary opinions I can discard.

[Omkara]

Happened to me when I read the Bible.

[blurgalurgalurga]

I'll take it a step further, and say that I don't want to know anything about any artist or performer whose work I admire. Actors especially, musicians too, painters definitely.
Lately I have been resisting the urge to learn the names of actors. Makes it easier to suspend the disbelief when I'm watching them act.
Really? Pahlaniuk's a flautist? Huh. Who knew.

[Poemer]

Sometimes you have to separate the artist from their work, and admit it is great despite the creator's shortcomings. Other times you have to admit that the guy/gal is a *beep* and you were just wrong about their stuff in the first place.

[ThingsComeAround]

makes me wonder what you would think about William S Burroughs
Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, even Mark Twain.

These people were not normal but the public can appreciate and enjoy their work to a greater degree over their contemporaries. How? Because they lived the life that isn't 'ideal' to conservatives.

Get off that high horse

[blurgalurgalurga]

I'm rethinking my position...I stand by what I said about actors, but maybe with writers and painters and even musicians, knowing their biography is often interesting in that it's a story in itself; and, occasionally, it offers the audience another way to interpret the material.

I'm thinking specifically of Randall Jarrell, the American poet, whose stuff I'd admired for years before learning that he eventually killed himself. Re-reading his work after knowing his personal story somehow changed the way I looked at it. The sad stuff seemed sadder, and the hopeful stuff seemed more poignant.

Another example, Vincent Van Gogh; sure he was a good painter and all, but would his stuff be as famous if he hadn't been a mentally ill suicide?

Christopher Marlowe was a great writer, but would he be as well-known if he hadn't been stabbed in the brain to death during a bar-fight?

Would Slaughterhouse Five be so memorable if Vonnegut hadn't actually been in Dresden himself? Probably; but it would have been remarkable because he'd been able to write so well about something he hadn't actually experienced. Like Stephen Crane, the guy who wrote the Red Badge of Courage and the Open Boat--he'd never been to war, nor shipwrecked, but that he could write so believably about those experiences massively (and justifiably) elevated his reputation.

Sometimes the bio can underline and emphasize stuff in the work itself, I guess. And, if the writer can convincingly explain or describe stuff they've never themselves seen, it puts them in a higher class, IMO.
I guess I'm mostly into the biographies of dead people though. Somehow it seems kind of trashy and paparazzi to document the living, while they are still producing new material. Save it for the post-mortem, I think...let Pahlaniuk do his Tom of Finland trip in private, and let the work stand on its own merits, or flop out from merit's lack.