Yes, I do. How about answering the question? I provided examples of two of his books whose titles I can recall readily. Thudlow Boink posted a very good question to you in response to your asinine comment. Do you have an actual answer or is it just more fun to rail?
Even though Wagner was not a serious pogrom advocator, his operas glorify the Germanic peoples and their culture, which makes a very neat fit with racial cleansing.
That’s not to say that Wagner is responsible for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. In hindsight, it’s easy to hate him, but let’s face it, racism was the rule in his time, not the exception. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge him by the standards of our time.
I don’t even want to blame OSC 100% for the things he says about gays. He goes to an LDS church, for Pete’s sake. That’s some heavy brainwashing.
His attitude toward the media is ridiculous, though. The media didn’t cause 9/11, the Lewinsky affair, or OSC’s dick to only work well while getting a reacharound at the rest stop on I-40 outside Greensboro. ROFL
Sure. And my comment is “asinine?” Really, having an opinion that someone holding poisonous beliefs about both gays and religion (if you’d bother to recall, I brought up BOTH as a I reason I no longer enjoyed his works) ought not to be supported by my dollars is asinine? Interesting.
The entire Homecoming saga. Children of the Mind. Songbird. Lovelock. His revolting rewrite of Hamlet. A Planet Called Treason. The Worthing Saga. The Alvin Maker series. The Ender’s Shadow series. Pastwatch.
I’m not going to go through and list every single sentence and character I found offputting. There’s a lot. It’s a general attitude and baked-in worldview that oozes into what he works, and it’s very obvious once you see it.
And as I said, I find him to be a horrible human being and he gets no dollars from me.
You read all these books (“The entire Homecoming saga. Children of the Mind. Songbird. Lovelock. His revolting rewrite of Hamlet. A Planet Called Treason. The Worthing Saga. The Alvin Maker series. The Ender’s Shadow series. Pastwatch”) from a guy you find revolting and horrible. Heh. That’s pretty funny. I only read a few of the Ender books, and don’t recall anything to get your knickers in a twist over. Not terrible good books either. Didn’t get the hype. In any case, there is a case to be made for reading books from authors whose views you find outlandish or horrible. That is, if you see literature as more than mere light entertainment for the beach and want to hear worldviews different from your own.
There is much to be glorified. And the Bible glorify the Jewish peoples and their culture. And there is much to be glorified. Everything is good.
Change Wagner, operas and Germanic to other authors, media and nation and you have the Nationalist side of 19th century arts in a nutshell, and Nationalism is one of the biggest changes that century brought. If every author who glorified his nation (or even who tried to reinvent it) was banned and his works burned, the bonfires would make Santa Ana fires look like matches.
Your snide comment to me was asinine.
That’s not what I said was asinine. See just above. Your snide comment to me was asinine. You are, of course, free to not support anyone and if you dislike the man for whatever reason, then don’t support him. But I am genuinely curious about what it is in the man’s fiction writing that shows “his poisonous beliefs”. You’ll recall that someone in this thread stated that the man’s beliefs are clearly present in his fiction writing. If it’s so obvious, then it really shouldn’t be that hard to provide examples. Note: I mentioned before that I liked some of his stuff and didn’t like some of his stuff. INHO, Card, as an author, isn’t all that great.
Well, if it’s so obvious and you can see it, you don’t have to go through every word in the body of work. Simply provide an example or two. I didn’t ask for a detailed exgesis.
I’m not drumming up business for the man. As I just said, I don’t think he’s all that as an author. But I am genuinely curious, and perhaps you can actually provide an example instead of just naming titles: What is it in his fiction writing that indicates his poisonous beliefs?
Homecoming Saga - Adultery results in death for women, not for men.
Zdorab is a gay character, who is basically reduced to servitude to all the other characters specifically because he is gay and “submissive.” He ends up force-married to the “spare” woman in the group because they MUST pair off. He finds their marriage fulfilling and wonderful (because gay people really WANT to have a heterosexual marriage, because that’s where things are the best!) even though he’s not sexually attracted to her - however, he feels uncomfortable when he has to teach the young males in the group because he finds them very attractive (homosexuals are pedophiles, you know.) When the group is betrayed - he’s the one who does it, because he’s a spineless faggot beta male.
Songmaster - The one bisexual character, Josif, marries a female character (because again, everyone likes a hetro marriage to breed in!) but he does need to have side-action (bisexuals are sluts!) so he seduces the innocent and childlike and completely inexperienced male main character, Annset (remember, gays are pedos!) Unfortunely, Annset has been given puberty-delaying drugs to maintain his pure voice, which cause a violently painful reaction to sexual touches. Josif is hunted down and killed by having his genitals ripped off because he “raped” Annset. His wife remarries a real man shortly afterwards and is much happier, as I recall.
Hamet rewrite - The linked review pretty much says it all. Hamlet’s father is a homosexual child molestor (yay!) who abuses every male character that shows up, and turns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gay (because that’s how being gay works) and ends up raping Hamlet in hell when they die.
Shadow Puppets - suddenly everyone decides that the purpose of life is to marry a woman and MAKE LOTS OF BABIES. Including the one gay character. Who shows up just tell Bean that he’s been saved from his past life of ruining human lives with medical experimentation by a woman he found with children from a former marriage, who marries him. Suddenly LIFE IS WONDERFUL! Now I have a normal hetero marriage and children, and that’s much more important than having any sort of satisfying sex life!
That’s a few examples, hope that’s enough.
You got some bigger regrets you want to share than recommending his books?
We met him a few times when we lived in North Carolina (he came to some cons put on in our town) and he seemed a nice enough sort. His Secular Humanist Revival speech was pretty good and certainly gave me the idea that he didn’t support the mainstream Ultra-Right-Wing views that were then coming into prominence.
He’s changed quite a bit since then.
At one point we were buying anything he wrote (somewhere, we have at least the first 3 Alvin Maker books, signed, as well as several others signed by him).
These days… not so much. While his political leanings don’t necessarily prevent us from buying his stuff, they don’t encourage it either. I think the last book of his that we bought was Lovelock, which we both thought was vile. That turned us off pretty thoroughly.
The Ender’s Game books had devolved to the point of “phone it in to milk the franchise” status by then.
I’m torn about seeing the movie if there truly is a version of Ender’s Game coming out next year. The originally story, and the book, kicked serious ass, but the movie is likely to muck that up thoroughly, and there’s the whole “don’t reward the crackpot” thing going on nowadays too.
That is EXACTLY what bothered me about Shadow Puppets. Especially Petra. She was in Battle School and now all of a sudden she’s Betty Fucking Crocker. With all due disrespect, fuck that.
Songmaster was weird for me. They have interstellar travel but give people crazy-ass drugs to keep their voices from changing during puberty INSTEAD of teaching them ***how to work with those changes. ***Seems to me a competent teacher could DO THAT instead of using weird drugs with shitty side effects. I don’t sing well so that’s my 2¢ worth.
That’s basically a kinder, high-tech version of making a castrato.
Perhaps I’m pleading a special case here, but I think it’s a bit simplistic/misleading to classify lexicography as “art.”
“art or craft,” I notice it says.
I’m not conversant enough with the various dictionaries of the world to appreciate them (or any particular one) as [a] work[s] of art, but craftsmanship is easy to recognize and appreciate, even for untutored me.
I’m just finishing “Ender’s Shadow” and there was a throw away line early in the book that there are infant organ farms that are primarily based on late term “abortions” in which the baby is delivered alive. This sounds like a scenario straight out of operation rescue propaganda.
That means exactly what it says: an art or a craft. It’s either one. They’re not writing a final examination question in which one of the available responses is a detractor.
Dictionaries are, of course, books. Books are written. Writing is, last I heard, both a craft and an art. In other words, an art or craft.
It might be an interesting exercise for an eager researcher to study the question of whether Mr. Minor’s contributions to the OED are notable for giving short shrift to Irish writers.
I trust that the above is not TOO cryptic.
And writing that is essentially “compiling” is not precisely the same as writing that is essentially “creating.”
Making a dictionary is not “essentially compiling.” There is a lot more to it, quite a lot more.
I’m sure there is.
I still think William Chester Minor is not a particularly good illustration of the principle of the artist and the work being two different subjects.