And the author of this article is tying himself into a pretzel trying to absolve Tolkien of this great shame.
Tolkien had a lot of eugenicist nonsense in his writing. Lots of commentary over how pure Aragorn’s “blood of the West” was, and how lesser, less-pure men are just more easily swayed by Sauron. It’s pretty vile.
On a related note; George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) actually traveled to Spain to fight in the Civil War on the side of the Anarchists, where he got shot in the neck and then had to flee the country after the Stalinists betrayed the Anarchists and Marxists and began rounding them up to imprison or execute them as ‘secret fascists’.
He wrote about the experience in his book Homage to Catalonia. There was also a movie mostly based on the book called Land and Freedom.
Stalinists betrayed the… Marxists
Oh, to hear a tankie try to explain that one.
They have a pasteable excuse why mls always purged communists
They would likely repeat the USSR’s propaganda that the POUM (marxists) were Trotskyists engaging in counter-revolutionary behavior along with the Anarchists, and that they had to be put down/imprisoned since the ‘only’ way to to win the war was if everyone simply allowed themselves to be totally under the command of the Stalinist faction.
The day comes for all of us when we find out our literary heroes were actually tremendous pieces of fucking shit
Whatcha got on Vonnegut?
Naaah, Terry Pratchett and Stephen King are solidly good guys. All the way.
The only somewhat potentially sus thing I know about Terry Pratchett is having written Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, combined with the idea that the stuff the latter got up to was an open secret to insiders. Have not actually seriously looked into this though.
Terry was autistic as fuck and I can forgive him a failure to spot a monster (who had already snowed, apparently, the entire British intelligentsia). It was one book and he never defended Gaiman again, so I’m willing to look past this one.
Fair
How does being ND excuse anything? Even if impaired, a choice is a choice.
autistic people (I am one) suck at social cues. We’re very weak on that level of thinking. It’s kinda what autism is. So I cut autistic people a lot of slack for fucking up social awareness. Neurotypicals should have been able to spot him as a predator long before autistic people would catch it. Hence the extra slack I cut Terry. He did his best.
As an ND person, I know very well how harsh being ND is, and what the very real consequences of that are. And it might ultimately cost me my life.
But we are still ultimately always responsible for our actions. And we must always be aware of this.
Well… They’re not all terrible
And Stephen King is a personal hero simply because he survived so much cocaine. But I’m still pretty pissed that I had to read the entirety of both It and Pet Cemetery. What the absolute fuck… there is 1000 pages between both of those books that just did not need to be.
Don’t even fucking get me started on Misery.
Debated replying to this because its speculation but Stephen King has exactly two tweets that I’m aware of telling people the Epstein client list is fake like the tooth fairy, Santa and UFOs…
and when I’m drunk and jacked, I also say olympic-level dumb shit.
I don’t, however, also publish an epic series of trend-setting horror novels.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
take it with grain of Misty salt that all floats down here
The one I saw it seemed like he meant he didn’t think the government bothered to create one and was trying to bury evidence. Could be wrong, though.
11/22/63
don’t even
start/endtimeloop with me, motherfucker. im a Star Trek nerd. I know more about temporal paradoxes than most anyone here! (Lemmy is a boiling stew of Star Trek nerdery, so at least I’m a good company)
Man, we could spiral on this. Misery was the last of his that I read. I tried “The Girl Who Loved tom Gordon” but threw it across the room.
Everybody with arts money did coke balls to the wall back then. The smart ones grew out of it.
I’m not here to debate the virtues of mountains of coke-- just how pissed I am at wasting the time of burning through 1000 pages of bullshit. perhaps I should be blaming his editors. whatever.
Dig deep enough, and everyone is kind of a piece if shit.
It’s hard not to look at Pandora’s box (AI) and think…
…maybe this is better?
lol no
Honestly if the person written a story is dead and the none is getting money or it I do not care.
I agree. My issue is that Tolkien’s views are rarely talked about or they are excused. He is often put forth as a straight progressive.
I feel you. It would sound silly if I said I can’t read the Prince because Machiavelli was a bad guy
Also, The Prince is highly sarcastic but is a good notice to anyone living in what might become a horrible place about what to avoid in leaders.
Funny how the Republican party match up with his qualifications.
The only way to not be disappointed is to not.
This is why we say such things as “We must separate the art from the artist.” Some of us pay to see Tom Cruise movies, some of us can’t stand to see his face. There are still plenty of fans of Harry Potter, but they can’t so much as mention it without being shouted down, these days.
They’re all human, unless they’re AI. So, we’re going to disagree with them on some, or many, or all things, aside from their art. There are extremely few Dolly Partons and Fred Rogers in the world. You can accept this, or you can cancel everyone but the pure, and then decide amongst them who is the most pure, and only ever listen to Dolly Parton songs.
Go ahead and keep screaming about this, but I’m done with it. I like the art I like, that doesn’t mean I like the artist. Deal with it.
It depends on your tolerance for how bad that person is and how much you want to contribute to their financial well being. For JK Rowling, my opinion is that if JK just said she doesn’t like trans people, I’d disagree, but that by itself may not be a reason to not enjoy the work produced by her. However, she actively fights to put down trans people and spreads transphobia. That is reason enough for me to never do anything that will finance her and therefore support her actions.
In this case, Tolkein is long dead. Nothing I do now will contribute to him further pushing and supporting fascism.
Everyone gets to make this choice on their own. Nobody said you’re not allowed to enjoy that art. If you decide that you’re fine supporting artists through thick or thin and there’s no line they can cross that will turn you away, then you can’t be surprised or upset when other people change their opinion of you as a person. If you’re okay with that, then that’s fine, it’s your life, live it.
I think we can pretty easily separate the idea of continuing to give money to someone who is one of the most active breeders of hate against transgender individuals as bad from the enjoyment of the work of a long dead author who supported horrible causes.
Does it have cancer yet? Any hope it will die soon?
Yeah. Hitler was a painter, too.
Surprised you’re not on reddit
