| Oh ick. |
[Mar. 14th, 2008|04:34 pm] |
I had recently picked up the first two books of a trilogy by John C Wright and have been bouncing off of them when I tried to read them. The characters seemed "off" somehow and the world (I think deliberately) a place full of scary, evil and profoundly twisted adults.
I had sort of the same trouble with some of the stuff in the Pullman books, especially the last one. But I had been going to try again, until I read this unpleasant and bigoted screed.
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/153285.html
He pretty much lost me at "pro-perversion" and even more so at the thought that he's teaching his bigotry and disgusting thoughts to his children.
His whining about poor persecuted Christians is just more of the same worldview.
I rarely pitch books, but I'm probably going to do so with these. My own sense of what's wrong is that his view of sexuality is so bent that the way in which one of the female characters is treated late in the book is a depressingly revealing look at his subconcious and not something I want to read. It isn't just that he's obnoxious - there's a vegetarian whose blog I was just reading, whose books I still like even though I think he's whacked. This just makes me think it unlikely that it's worth my effort to try to find something.
If you are good enough you may be able to transcend that (Card manages off and on, for me at least.)
It isn't just political, but at some point I don't want to support people who turn my stomach, any more than he does. And if he can't see the difference between pedophilia or necrophilia and being gay, he's the one who is perverse by my standards. |
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| Comments: |
It's good to be able to encounter authors in the wild and realize they're not people you want any connection with, including being their reader.
There are so many terrific books out there that any method of narrowing the choices is a relief.
And yeah, his comments about gay people are repulsive.
the way in which one of the female characters is treated
That would be the busty "14"-year-old and the kinky bondage scenes?
Exactly. I had trouble with early parts of the book, although there are "people in a weird world" stories that I like such as Dave Duncan's Rose Red City.
After I bounced off the early part of the book I tried a couple of parts of the book at random. This is not a problem for me, I'm not a particularly linear reader. I often read endings, and spoilers don't bother me. One of the parts I read was a skimpy clothing bondage bit that kind of creeped me out.
I set the book aside thinking maybe there was context that would make it work.
And I have read and tolerated things like some really skeevy Philip Jose Farmer stuff.
It's sort of anti-erotica written to titillate while claiming to be something else.
Persecutors often whine that they are being persecuted.
This guy is so deeply into his fantasy of being persecuted by H'wood (and other Satan-worshiping nonChristian devils) that I can't imagine he would be capable of fiction fit to read. Though I must say it takes an active imagination to see what he sees. Still, it's not anything a normal human would want to see.
I bounced off these books early on, as well. Sigh. | |
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