Never? How do you feel about Thomas Moore, Ayn Rand, Heinlein, Swift? Certainly, these examples tend to deal with their view of the world in negatives, but there’s a certain sense of what should be going on. Homer, Chaucer, Mallory and whoever wrote (/amended/composed, etc.) Beowulf not to mention nearly every myth, takes a more didactic view of literature. Spillane, Howard and co. all have ideas on what the best manner to act is and they’re writing pretty dumbed-down (by literature standards) work. These are certainly you can’t tell me that the author’s views of the world don’t shape these works.
I have a hard time understanding how one could appreciate any of the authors above without considering their views on how things are/what they should be like (I suppose they aren’t necessarily tied together, but without a basis in reality, however tenuous, the wishfull thinking would likely be unbearable). To me, the author’s viewpoint can’t be an important part of the work.
From your description of how you read fiction, it seems to me that you’re essentially turning everything into a well-written piece of new journalism.
I suppose we could discuss the meaning of “early” if we wanted to. (I don’t.) It was published in 1969, only three years after her first novel was published. In a 36 year long career, that’s early. (OK, maybe I do.)
I think there’s a trend, possibly accentuated by the vast amounts of trilogies, quadrilogies, noniligies that are coming out these days, to believe that authors are putting out a world that they wish to see, or, as you say, a world they don’t wish to see. That’s simplistic. Is Stand on Zanzibar less of a story depending on whether it was a world Brunner loved or abhored? Anyway, this is off the OP, I think.
No, I can’t tell you that; their views do shape their works. Of course they do. But the OP’s issue (seems to me) is that any happening or characterization in a story that offends her makes that story nothing but junk. I don’t need to like any of the characters in The Maltese Falcon to be able to appreciate it as a fine story. (And I don’t like them. Any of 'em.) I don’t need to agree with Heinlein’s depiction of Friday to think that Friday is a fine story. I don’t need to believe that Majipoor (Silverberg again, Elysian) with its male dominated society and lack of almost any even vivid, let alone strong, female characters is my kind of world to think that the six books are entertaining stories. That’s my issue. An author is not necessarily putting forth what he/she wants; they are putting forth what works (or what they think will work) for the story they are trying to tell. Sometimes a story is just a story. Anything else is just a bonus.
Just want to recommend James H. Schmitz as an author writing science fiction in the '60’s with strong women that I at least find believable, and they were quite a relief to find as a teenager. Most of his work was recently re-released in paperback by Baen Books.
The worst reverse offender, IMO, is Sherri Tepper. She is terribly dismissive of men, even going so far as to suggest that they are genetically incapable of living in civilized society.
Now, I also think that she writes good stories, but the sweeping and offensive gender generalizations are a bit distracting. I can, however, read her books all the way through, something I can’t do with some Silverberg or Heinlein. I’ve often wondered if I’m more willing to look past her bias because it isn’t my gender that she is slandering.
On her writing or whether or not we’d like to read books bashing men?
I made it through four years of film studies and had to hear about Mulvey and the Phallic Gaze about ten thousand times per day. You get over it.
I’ve not read that author though.
As for feminist or female-centric writing, I did try giving Tanith Lee’s The Storm King a couple of tries, but the poor writing really turned me off.
Not that girls can’t write, mind you. But now that I think of it, I can’t think of a single non-school book I’ve ever read by a female author. Well, a fiction one.
I don’t doubt that that’s so. I’m not familar with the author you mention but this thread has got me wondering if I’m the same way. But I think that my recognition of what may be slanderous in the story allows me to set it aside. I don’t believe everything I read.
Did you ever read “When Things Changed” by Joanna Russ in the second Dangerous Visions? Hell of a story, but not real good towards men. I didn’t take it personally because I know I’m not like the men in the story, therefore the story was about some men, not all men. I’ve no doubt that some men took it as an indictment of all men.
I’m not sure if the perception that one character = all people similar to that character are the exact same as that character is a personal perception, something that’s gender based, or culturally based, or what. Dunno if this post is helpful to you or not - hope so.
I’m sure this is a whoosh, but: I’ll tell you two right now, both by Connie Willis. If you’re in a serious mood, read Doomsday Book. If you’re in a light mood, read Bellwether. OK, Ursula LeGuin, The Word for World is Forest. Joanna Russ: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. The last two non-Miles books by Bujold. And so on. Was I whooshed?
I’m not asking about women who can write- I’m asking about women authors with some talent who write good stories but nonetheless portray most or all men in a negative light. I’m talking about the reverse of the Silverbergs and Heinleins, so bad women authors or good women authors with good men don’t really apply.
I can’t enjoy a story unless I can see myself in one of the characters (I know, I know: let the psychoanalyzing begin). For a good book, even if the character is unsympathetic (like Thomas Covenant, for example), I can still see a part of myself, a part of our shared humanity, in his denial and guilt. The women in a Silverberg book are unrecognizable to me, as women or humans.
And for those of you who say that not every character can be fully fleshed out in a book: it can be done in a sentence or two. Consider this quote from Harlan Ellison’s short story Pretty Maggie Moneyeys:
Okay, so maybe the sexist authors didn’t put as much thought into their descriptions as Ellison- that’s even more telling. I don’t know why some of the guys in this thread can’t admit that some famous male sf authors were talented writers and chauvinists of the worst sort.
That’s mostly true. Science fiction authors like Silverberg and Niven came out of the sixties and seventies. Back then, virtually all fiction was sexist by our standards (try reading the best-sellers of the day). Back then, society as a whole was sexist by our standards. These authors are the product of their time.
If you can read authors like Silverberg and Niven and judge them by the context of the era they grew up in, you may be able to realize they are not sexist by that standard and enjoy their work. (And I realize that the works cited in the OP were written fairly recently - but the authors are both old men whose habits and points of view were formed decades before.) If you don’t like their work because it’s dated, or for any other reason, pass over it.
She’d be neither pleased nor surprised, given that she’s made this claim herself. In at least one essay about The Left Hand of Darkness, she’s expressed disappointment with her younger self for using the masculine pronoun to refer to the ambigendered folk of her book, and has wondered why she thought their society would be most accessible if viewed through the eyes of a male human. She has said that using the male pronoun led to a de facto treatment of the characters as male, even though the entire point of the book is that they weren’t.
So yeah, her early books were about men.
Susan, Sherri Tepper also annoys the spit out of me, for the reasons you mention and for her despicable treatment of a character in a book: a guy who writes bestselling horror novels and who looks exactly like Stephen King to me is condemned to hell for writing such awful, violence-provoking books, and Sherri sure seems smug about it. What a twit!
Marion Zimmer Bradley is another offender in this sense. But she’s just a bad author all around, in my opinion.
And yes, I can recognize that an author’s sexism was more or less par for the course when he or she was writing. That doesn’t mean it’s going to annoy me any less.
Susan, I will mostly agree with you about Sheri Tepper. The first book I read by her was The Fresco, which was fresh and funny. I still loved that book, and cackle delightedly when I get to the part where
The aliens impregnate all of the pro-life male politicians because they were so adamant and publicly certain that intelligent life was sacred and should not be “killed” in the womb.
However, even that delightful book had some rather heavy things to say about the way men are. Tepper does NOT like war, and she ties the tendency to go to war directly to the male genetalia. So, in Raising the Stones, some of her male characters are over-the-top warlike and mysognistic. In The Gate to Women’s Country, the same.
She doesn’t seem to have a balance. There are no women out there beating the war drums, or fighting, or being dispicable. I know for a fact that out in the real world there are some women who are warlike and merciless. She just leaves them out of her novels.
I can read Sheri Tepper because I’m not a guy and it doesn’t bother me much. But if I were, I wouldn’t give her books a second glance.
Hmm. Me, I don’t read Silverberg because he’s a jerk toward a group of people I’m not a part of. My Y chromosome doesn’t prevent me from noticing that, or being annoyed by it.
But I wouldn’t blame you if you did read Silverberg. He’s not directly insulting your sex. But if it insults you that he is insulting anyone’s sex at all, then I guess it makes sense.
If we all stayed away from literature that made insults on the basis of sex, then I would guess that soon we would have less people writing in that style. And that would be best for all concerned.
