posted
For those of you that don't get over to the "other side", a poster did a very classy, non-whiney job of asking the question that so many of us have asked. This was the response that, I think, we've been waiting and hoping for:
quote:Danny, I think someone might end up starting a support group for what you're experiencing We get someone in here at least once every few weeks with the exact same problem.
Card's views, and his means of expressing them, have evolved over time, and I don't think that you need to go back and start reading into his older works undercurrents and hidden meanings that you've derived from his recent political writings.
The reaction we get here most often, actually, is people saying, "How could the same man who wrote these insightful stories that show real empathy for so many characters with different backgrounds and struggles, whose moral universes so align with mine, be the same man who wrote this essay that I abhor?" My answer to that is, believe the stories, not the essays. It is easy for a political writer to become carried away, overstate his position, and offend people. It is much harder to write a good story that you don't believe in. If you love the stories, then I think you are seeing a huge part of who Card truly is, even if you wouldn't get along with him in a political discussion.
Card's positions in politics seem, to me, to be more the result of his personal history and his struggles with people reacting to his work than the source of some revelatory insight into his deepest character. If you read an essay and come away thinking he is a bigot or anything equally despicable, then you have misjudged him. It's not a hard mistake to make, but it is a mistake.
Keep enjoying the fiction. It's worth it. Don't let the author ruin it for you.
kacard said,
quote:OSC was invited by the MIT Students for Israel to speak on campus. This is an interview done following his speech.
OSC at MIT
The entire interview is good, but here is what I thought might be relevant to this discussion:
TT: -- where does the inspiration for your political writing come from?
OSC: I just look at the real world and I read everything I can get my hands on and I try to find out the truth as best I can. When I find that the truth isn’t being told widely and that the story that is being widely reported is misleading or leading us into bad decisions, then I do my best to try to balance it with the best and most powerful rhetoric I can to defend what I see as the best course of action...
TT: How do you reconcile things for people who respect you as an author but might not agree with your political views?
OSC: All I tell them is, I hate every word that Barbara Streisand has said about politics and I love her singing and I listen to her songs. I disagree with a lot of people and I still respect their art and find value in it.
At the same time, if somebody really loves my books, loves those stories, what they’re doing is they’re embracing my worldview. They may not agree with me on the specifics, but they dwelt in my mind for the length of time that they were in that book, and they weren’t uncomfortable there if they liked the book. So maybe they really ought to -- instead of just assuming that because I disagree with them I must be wrong -- maybe they ought to do some of the research I’ve done and find out why I believe the things I believe...
Thank you Kristine and Geoff, this means alot to me.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Yeah, I enjoyed those responses too, thanks for posting them over here.
