From NRO’s Corner:
Here’s the thing: early Pinter is brilliant stuff, if you care even marginally about theatre. He made a mark on theatre that has been profound and important and–speaking strictly from the perspective of what happens on a stage, and what happens between actor and audience–magnificent….
the work remains, whatever kind of dunce the artist may be when he’s not doing his thing. If it is passionate art, if it is evocative art, if it resonates in some extraordinary way with its audience, then whether it is high art or low art, from Bambi to Stagecoach to The Birthday Party, I truly don’t give a rat’s rear end what the artist does or says when he’s off the clock. I’m sick and tired of all this passion about other people’s points of view–it lends a relevancy to their politics that really doesn’t exist. And it transforms the experience of being a consumer of the arts into a sort of priggish screening process, in which the artist is carefully vetted for wrongthink before we can sit back and drink in his work. Leave that to our Stalinist chums on the left…please let’s not join them.
I thought this was interesting, especially in light of the criticism of my fiction – even the attacks on my right to sit in judgment of the work of my SFWA peers – that one regularly encounters among those who dislike my political opinions. Now, it’s no secret that I’m not a great novelist, but I’m a reasonably popular one judging by my print runs and the number of publishers who continue to offer me book contracts.
And if THE WAR IN HEAVEN is somewhat cringe-inducing at times, I’m quite optimistic that the improvement shown in THE WORLD IN SHADOW will continue in THE WRATH OF ANGELS. I quite like the fact that a good third of my fan base is made up of a largely non-Christian goth crowd; they correctly view my Christian worldview as the starting point for the novels, not the end. I’m quite confident that they will like WRATH very much indeed – I’ll post the first draft of the cover here soon.
As The Corner emailer noted, one’s enjoyment of a book, a play or a movie should not completely depend upon its stroking of one’s own opinions. Sure, it’s impossible to enjoy something that is too heavy-handed in its assaults on one’s perception of reality, (speaking of which, I’ve got to write a review of David Weber’s Honor Harrington books soon), but one should be able to enjoy a well-crafted tale even if it contains elements of those who think very differently.
This is not to say that my books, or anyone else’s books, can’t suck. But they should be judged on their own merits, not on the personal merits of the author. In my opinion, this distinction has been almost entirely lost in the SFWA, which is why the OC and I will be running for office in the next SFWA election.
I hope you, my gentle readers, will not mind helping me develop my program to lead the SFWA into the 21st century and beyond….