Only point I disagree with in this article: "The problem is that there is no separation of the artist from the art. And when that art in question is a figure of the cultural significance of Superman, the choice of who gets to put words in that mouth is about more than a literal reading of whatever script he turned in." I personally believe that as soon as a work has left the mind of the artist for the physical world, it becomes an entity in and of itself, independent of the artist's intent. In this or really any regard, to reject a body of work due to the personal flaws of the artist is an incredibly close-minded way to go about appreciating art. There's good evidence that Charles Dickens was rabidly anti-Semitic, at least early in his career. Does this mean we have to reject his work? Ezra Pound was a Fascist and by many accounts a total bastard. Does this preclude us from appreciating his poetry? And not to tread too closely to relativism, which I don't really like as a philosophy, but there's a lot of speculation pointing towards Walt Whitman being gay. Does that mean that somebody who's really homophobic is justified in rejecting Leaves of Grass? I haven't read much from Orson Scott Card after Ender's Game, mainly because I felt like the writing just fell to shit pretty quickly following that one. As Kleinbl00 points out, there are hints of Card's political POV even in that, as in all of his works. But I don't think that disqualifies something like Ender's Game from being good work. By all technical and stylistic accounts, a strong case can be and has been made for some of his stuff. His social/political views are unfortunate, and it sucks that he might inject such notions into his books. But just like every other idea that's folded into a piece of art, those ideas are subject to distortion as soon as the words leave his fingers. A work takes on a life of its own, and it may not end up where the author intended or wanted it to end up. If a work is fundamentally strong, then that kind of supersedes any philosophical flaws the artist may have suffered.
That is the interesting part of the argument and the one that "TrueReddit" hasn't gotten into, which is a shame in my opinion. You're right - Dickens hated jews. Lewis Caroll was pretty clearly a pedophile. That was a hundred years ago, though. Here's where I think things get interesting: When every author has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a LiveJournal and a fan page, it becomes impossible to ignore the author. Who knows what Shakespeare thought of Queen Elizabeth? We'll never know; there were no 140-character verbal diarrhea droplets to tell us. Hilary Mantel, on the other hand, is known more to the British for what she said about Kate Middleton than Wolf Hall. And I don't see that changing. Despite the fact that books are not living documents (unless you're Orson Scott Card, who has no problem completely rewriting Planet Called Treason so that Greedo shoots first again and again and again), our regard for them has become a lot more dynamic simply because the author's intent is now effortlessly discernable. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another part to upload.I personally believe that as soon as a work has left the mind of the artist for the physical world, it becomes an entity in and of itself, independent of the artist's intent.
I agree with all of this, but I really don't want to. Makes me really pessimistic about our dwindling abilities to view things in their own context rather than through a series of imperfect filters. It was bad enough when the input chain went: artwork -> cultural context -> eyeball/earhole/mouth -> subjective interpretation of input -> "here's what I experienced and here's what I think." (Pretty sure I left out a few steps, but the general idea stands). I mean, it was hard enough for the world to come to terms with Moby Dick or "Rite of Spring," right? With today's information blitz, we've added a hell of a lot of layers of subjective gauze to that chain. Makes it that much harder to get to the core of the thing, actually identify the good. Speaking of, only read the first four installments so far, but damn, I like that story. But how much of that enjoyment is colored by interaction with the author, huh? This is going to start driving me crazy.
Oh, yeah, I completely disagree with that statement. No idea why the guy who wrote this article felt the need to insert his own meaningless opinions into what should have been a factual piece. I happen to think Ender's Game is mostly trash. I don't care about the politics; I care about the ridiculous premise we're supposed to accept and the fact that he had one good idea and tried to do more than a short story with it.