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Ever lose respect for an author?


Anna Begins

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pontalba said this would make a good thread and this is an issue I am caught up in with one of my favorite authors, so I'm interested to read what you have to say.

Did you ever find something out about an author that completely turned you off?

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Hey...great :D

 

Thought I would post that corrected link over here.

 

V.S. Naipaul, misogynist. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2011/06/09/misogyny-is-alive-and-well-v-s-naipaul-on-female-writers.

 

Anna, which author is yours?

I accessed the link. Who, by the way, is V.S. Naipaul. :D

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Hey...great :D

 

Thought I would post that corrected link over here.

 

V.S. Naipaul, misogynist. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2011/06/09/misogyny-is-alive-and-well-v-s-naipaul-on-female-writers.

 

Anna, which author is yours?

That is a cool article! I dunno who he is (google) but “misogynist tosh” is hilarious.  Mine isn't nearly so serious, but really is to me.

During A Wanted Man (my 15th Jack Reacher book) I found out Lee Child's pen name is Jim Grant and is a British author.  I feel lost.  I feel like Child (ahem!  Grant :angry: )  has misrepresented himself and the Reacher books just don't hold much excitement as they used too.  I don't even know if I will read the next one.  Maybe.  Of course. lol  Many writers use aliases and I don't mind.  But Child (Grant) knows so much about the US- population of any towns/ cities- down to the area codes and right down to which interstate to get from where to where, our military practices- and the history of our army... I dunno, it's just like he pretends to be American.  I guess all that info is on the internet somewhere but I can't shake the feeling he is an imposter of some kind.  I guess I just need to come to grips with it.  But I am still hesitant to resume my love.

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Lol. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul

 

Anna, maybe he used to live over here?

Nope, but I looked on wiki, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Child

His wife is from New York.

I know.  I feel stupid.  But what can I feel??

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uh, yes! I told my favorite author, at the time, via email, parts of my life story, and he thought I was making it up and that he couldn't be bothered by such nonsense. It was apparent he was a jerk. So, I quite reading his latest book, and haven't bought anything else of his. I know my story's hard to believe, but he treated me with such contempt. I'll leave him to his own sick sad little world... and not bring him into mine. :D

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Wow, some of these stories here are not nice at all :(. I can imagine some of you feel betrayed.

 

@ AnnaBegins

Thanks for telling me Orson Scott Card has renounced his views, that does make me feel a bit better.

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Anna

 Maybe Childs is fascinated with our country ,as a lot of Americans are fascinated by England ,so you could look at it like that and consider it a compliment that he wants to write stories that take place over here .

 

 I can't think of any authors that I've lost respect for. They are all human and have their own beliefs and values  , just as the rest of us do .   :)

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Wow, some of these stories here are not nice at all :(. I can imagine some of you feel betrayed.

 

@ AnnaBegins

Thanks for telling me Orson Scott Card has renounced his views, that does make me feel a bit better.

Ooh, really? I loved Ender's Game, but hate that man's views!

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uh, yes! I told my favorite author, at the time, via email, parts of my life story, and he thought I was making it up and that he couldn't be bothered by such nonsense. It was apparent he was a jerk.

That is awful!  I am so sorry!  What a jerk.

 

Anna

 Maybe Childs is fascinated with our country ,as a lot of Americans are fascinated by England ,so you could look at it like that and consider it a compliment that he wants to write stories that take place over here .

That is a great view, Julie, I will hang on to that, thanks.

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I know that most of the non-British authors I read who have tried to write books set in England with English characters always get let down by the little things, such as slang, swear words and sometimes even just basic words (we don't have sidewalks, we have pavements, for example).  It might have spoiled my enjoyment of the book by taking me out of the story, but I wouldn't lose respect for the author, but I can understand why it's thrown you.  It sounds to me like Child has done a great job and I'd be impressed that he can write convincingly enough to make you believe he was American!  :)

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 It sounds to me like Child has done a great job and I'd be impressed that he can write convincingly enough to make you believe he was American!   :)

True, true...

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It might have spoiled my enjoyment of the book by taking me out of the story, but I wouldn't lose respect for the author, but I can understand why it's thrown you.  It sounds to me like Child has done a great job and I'd be impressed that he can write convincingly enough to make you believe he was American!   :)

 

Beat me to it :D   I read some books by American author Ian Tregillis last year, who'd set his story in London, and I was occasionally thrown out of what were otherwise great reads by his lack of research.  Sounds like Child is doing a good job as far as this aspect goes.  I'd have more of a problem if he'd pretended to be American, but he hasn't as far as I know.  I saw him interviewed last year and he was interesting to listen to.  I don't think he's betrayed anyone.

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On a slight variant of this subject, some actors advertised private lives have put me off watching them. Tom Cruise for one. I heard him talking about Brooke Shields taking anti-depressants for her post-partum depression. He thought she was terrible for doing so. Really tore into her about it.

 

I don't care what his private beliefs are, as long as he doesn't try to ridicule another for theirs.

 

The old Hollywood studio system was, in many ways, awful. But, they did keep a lid on scandals of their stars.

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Kate

 I saw the same thing with Tom Cruise and it made me really angry . He had no right to make those comments. He's not a lady and has never been in her position ,so he was very nasty for making that remark . I agree, if someone is intentionally  making comments that will offend someone else that is not acceptable .  Kinda like Adult Bullying ,don't you think ?

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Did Lee Child ever claim to be American? What does it say in his author bio at the start of his books? If he did then I can understand feeling betrayed, if not then I would just be impressed by his research and dedication to his work.

His book bio's are pretty generic.

 

This is pretty interesting:

Although he’d never lived in the U.S., Grant had visited frequently, had lapped up American TV, and had even married an American woman. “It was really a question of mimicking,” he says. “If you’re familiar with the rhythms and the word choices of the country and you can put them down on paper, it actually becomes their nationality.”  

...

Child aims to deliver a different American vision. When Reacher goes to Nebraska, as he did in Worth Dying For, Child borrows images from movies and TV shows — it’s a “Nebraska” of our collective imagination. As Child puts it, “If you stick to that mental image, everybody says, ‘That’s a well-researched book.’ If you actually supply the reality, people say, ‘The guy’s never been there.’”

...

Child wrote another New York adventure, The Hard Way, in which he worked to nail the precise details of the city’s streets. “Then I read it through and thought, This is ridiculous.,” he says. “It looks like a MapQuest page on acid. So I thought, Sod it, I’ll make it wrong deliberately. You get down the West Side Highway, make a left onto Houston …”

Edited by Anna Begins
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Well while I have never gone off an author because of something I learned about them, it comes from knowing that I would do so if I ever knew anything about them so I never look them up or read about there personal lives and avoid all info about them except if a new book is out. lol It is sometimes hard to play deaf, you know, hear no evil see no evil will still buy book :-P lmao!

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I can't recall that's ever happened to me yet.  I think maybe the closest was reading a lot of Andre Norton SF as a kid growing up and then finding out later that the author was a she using a male pseudonym...but I wasn't betrayed just interested in why...Anna Begins  I find your reaction quite interesting. Do you think you will be able to get over it?

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I can't recall that's ever happened to me yet.  I think maybe the closest was reading a lot of Andre Norton SF as a kid growing up and then finding out later that the author was a she using a male pseudonym...but I wasn't betrayed just interested in why...Anna Begins  I find your reaction quite interesting. Do you think you will be able to get over it?

I really really hope so!  Jack Reacher is my literary crush! I'm going to take a Jack Reacher breather :P and then see how I feel.  New one is out in September and I stll have 3 more to get to that one.  So I dunno...

Speaking of Andre Norton, I can come up with two others that have strange name/controversies.  Gertrude Stein writing The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas and Katherine Burdekin writing as a man, Murray Constantine because of her views.

Edited by Anna Begins
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