I don’t know that there’s ever been a time in history where the identity of the author of a book has mattered more to the publishing industry.
Sure, it’s always helped to be famous when hawking a book, and as I’ve stressed repeatedly, authors have always been expected to be good self-promoters. But in the era of social media we’re entering new territory where books seem much more inextricably tied to their author’s identity and presence than ever before.
Where in the past the author was just a name on a spine and a one inch by one inch author photo, we now have social media and instantaneous connections with our favorite authors. Rather than being mysterious figures, authors are now palpably human to readers and just a few clicks away.
Publishers very much care who the author is. And it’s definitely shaping the culture.
In a recent article on 1984, George Packer critiqued what he describes as a left-wing version of doublespeak that conflates art, politics, and the author’s identity:
For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance—even its subject matter—is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value.
It’s gotten me curious:
How much does the author of a book matter to you? Is it something you look up after the fact? Do you follow your favorite authors on social media? Have you ever bought a book because you got to know the person first online?
Would you care if you personally disliked an author or their politics? Or is a good book just a good book and you don’t care who wrote it?
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Art: A still life of an open book by Frans Luyckx or Simon Renard de Saint-André
I disagree with that person. Some people will make up anything to slander the left.
I follow my favorite authors on social media. Unless they do something really awful that you can’t ignore or make a point of telling you what to think about the book, then a good book is just a good book. I choose books based on the expectation that I’ll enjoy the story and writing.
However, who the author is and their politics definitely influences my perception of nonfiction. But I wouldn’t call that art.
If I stumble into reading about an author’s personal life, I very often try to forget it. The voice living within a novel is, I find, a crisp essence of the author’s best self. Digging for the real person behind a great book is a dangerous undertaking because it is so likely to disappoint. Reading Looking for Alaska right now, and Pudge is so amusing…reading authors’ biographies and not their books, he seems to understand this separation but cleverly, deliberately, approaches it from the opposite direction.
Ok so I meant to post in the main thread not as a reply to Dana…oops.
I agree, Dana. It’s a relief to hear you say that. If an author has to be a paragon of virtue and/or an uber personality to sell a book they have slaved over and juggled many balls to perfect, then it’s getting too hard.
FWIW George Packer isn’t exactly a conservative commentator (he was a longtime writer for The New Yorker), which is one reason it jumped out at me. I don’t necessarily agree with his critique, but I don’t think it’s about slandering the left.
The best recent critiques of Leftist excesses recently have been by wiser Leftists like George Packer. Political Correctness has grown so grotesque I sometimes wonder if some of it is being created by Right-Wing provocateurs!
Generally, when I’m reading fiction I like to read a book for entertainment, not to hear an author’s political opinions, so it definitely pulls me out of the story to hear political stuff in a work of fiction, especially if it’s a subtle (or not so subtle) attempt to shame one side or the other, preach at me about moral issues, or solicit a reaction from me that’s unrelated to the plot. That’s playing dirty in my opinion. When I want to read political commentary I will seek out information through a different medium.
So I guess I’m saying I don’t care what the author’s political position is as long as they tell a good story. I don’t judge their fictional work as any less enjoyable even if I happen to disagree with their real-life opinions.
I like to believe that stories find the author, and not the other way around. It’s much less disappointing that way (for my own work, as well).
I go both directions. Generally, once I’ve discovered an author I like, I will look them up out of curiosity. If I read someone enough, I usually see or sense their politics and personalities through their work, anyway, and gravitate or reject accordingly. As for direct interaction, occasionally authors will pass through our neck of the woods on tour and if I’m a fan of their books, I’ll try to go hear their talk. A small handful I follow on Facebook out of interest and respect, but I do little to engage them. And as an author myself, I’m not very interested in sharing my personal life, or having personal relationships with fans. I want them to be keen on my books, not me.
Great link, Nathan! I’m particularly bemused by the irony of Google Maps wiping Jura, the Scottish island where George Orwell wrote ‘1984’, off the face of the Earth!
Packer rightly slates what C. S. Lewis called the ‘Autobiographical Error”, the tendency to infer an author’s personality and opinions from the stories he writes. I pity anyone trying to do that from my WIPs, for example!
In answer to your very good questions, my reading a book does not imply approval of the author. Even the greatest artist remains human, and sometimes artists are very ‘Scattered’ in the psychological sense, as bad at some things as they are good at others.
I’m as opinionated and emotional as the next person, but I have still enjoyed stories with ‘messages’ I did not agree with. I hope as broad a spectrum of people as possible will one day enjoy my stories, and I would not like to unnecessarily alienate prospective readers.
There’s definitely books I like, movies I like, and art I like by people whose personalities, politics, and behaviors rub me the wrong way. Mamet. Mamet is an incredibly frustrating personality, but State and Main is such a terrific movie. Vincent Gallo? Ugh. (And yet Buffalo 66 is a practical masterpiece). But that’s movies.
I still love all of Salinger’s works with all my heart and soul and what he did to Joyce Maynard (and likely others) is pretty unforgivable. I guess a good book is a good book. Though I’d likely draw the line somewhere.
Also, I have definitely picked up books from folks after liking their personality via online exposure.
I’ve just read the 1937 Orwell article “Spilling The Spanish Beans” which Packer links to in his article. I never read it before, which is probably a good thing as it would likely have put me off Orwell’s other writings, including “1984”. Certainly, in the 1937 article Orwell was all over the place, condemning Democracy as Fascism and basically suggesting everyone in Spain was wrong except Orwell himself, a non-Spaniard. And I did know he hated Catholicism but not as much as this article reveals. Luckily, Orwell’s thinking matured and clarified over the next decade.
I can say that I really don’t care who the author is. I only care about a great story. HOWEVER – I recently read a book that I LOVED. But then I made the mistake of reading the afterword. In the afterward, the author went on to talk about the reason she wrote the book, and what she was trying to “say”. Well, unfortunately, after reading that, I could no longer identify with everything that I loved about the book only moments before. Where I WOULD have purchased the next book in a second, I removed if from my TBR because I knew that I would not have the emotional connection that I had in the first book, because the story was no longer about the topic that was so close to me. I know that sounds odd… that I should be able to push that aside. But I couldn’t.
I’m sorry but an author’s politics does mean something to me. A book is a much larger commitment than other forms of entertainment. A song lasts only a few minutes, so I may still listen to Ted Nugent even if I disagree with his politics. Even a movie is a commitment of only a an hour and half to two hours. A book takes a good 10 to 12 hours to get through. It’s a much larger commitment. The author doesn’t necessarily have to agree with me (I still read Dean Koontz), but I like to know what I’m getting myself into. And yes, I often do buy books after meeting the author online, including yours.
I have seen arguments very similar to George Packer’s made as a way of diminishing works by diverse authors, as well as the continued need for diverse voices. The basic premise is usually that the success of a POC or female or queer author is undeserved and just due to “political correctness.” It’s deeply patronizing and rooted in a very myopic, monochrome view of what Real Literature is.
Publishing is a mostly-White industry in which POC and LGTBQ authors are still routinely denied entry because “oh, we already have a Black/Muslim/trans book,” and in which female and POC authors are reviewed far less often than their White male counterparts in non-trade pubs. (Pubs like, ahem ahem, The New Yorker.) Suggesting that a diverse author’s work has value only inasmuch as it functions as some sort of leftist virtue signal is incredibly arrogant and dismissive.
Personally, I’ve never felt the need to look up an author online just because they wrote a book I like. That said, I do follow a lot of authors on Twitter, and I’ve also bought and read many books that wouldn’t have otherwise been on my radar thanks to effective author promotion. But while I don’t mind if an author gets political on their social media (if I don’t like it I just mute or unfollow them), it’s not why I care about what they write. I’ve certainly never bought or read a fiction book just because I agreed with an author’s politics, or because an author belonged to a certain sphere of identity.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that no one ever considered this before — I’m reading Somerset Maugham’s Don Fernando, and he has a whole chapter on this topic, where he discusses the life and character of El Greco and how intriguing it is based on the fascination with his paintings. He also glancingly mentions Byron and Shelley, and how much they were in the public eye.
I’ve wondered about this for myself for quite a while now; whether I can enjoy the art or writing or other creation of someone I find despicable. I recently read an essay by Mavis Gallant where she refers to Sartre’s ideas on the topic in relation to Celine — Sartre didn’t think any of Celine’s novels had value, while others believed that everything Celine had written should be in print.
And there’s a recent article by Nick Cave discussing Morrissey in relation to this sort of thing…
I don’t think I’ll ever solve the dilemma to my satisfaction, but it’s a great topic to explore!
I agree that authors have always been required to be good self-promoters, back to Lord Byron, Hemingway, etc, but I still think the degree to which the author’s identity matters has reached a zenith. Especially for “rank and file” authors who aren’t the literary celebrities of their day. The internet has opened up a whole new avenue for engaging directly with authors who may have remained mostly anonymous in the past apart from the dust jacket.
I don’t think authors were so widely required to self-promote until quite recently. In fact, the means of doing so were extremely limited before this century, other than some press releases and interviews and signings. I have a thousand or more books on my shelves and I can think of very few where author promotion played a role in my purchase. I still know very little about most of the authors. Promotion to and by book stores was far more important.
There were always a few self-promoters, such as Byron and Hemingway, who needed no encouragement to do so, even before they wrote anything. And I’ve read publishing professionals wisely warning that trying to make the author the main means of promotion is a rather limited strategy, particularly for a trade publisher promoting a novel to book stores. Self-publishing is different, of course.
Oh, another thing Maugham mentions — how often critics conflate the author’s intentions and creations with how the created work speaks to the viewer/reader/what have you. Both views (the author’s act of creation and the communication of the final piece with the audience) are valid, but he notes that reviews and criticism often fail to distinguish the two in the midst of the analyses.
Moderately. I’ve written off enter genres (literary fiction and non fiction) simply because they one, talk down to me and treat me like an idiot and two, they all read the same.
However, there are a few semi-well known authors that I will refuse to read simply because their crass “progressive” politics that they spew all over social media have not only permanently soured me on their product, but on them as well.
To me the author of a book does matter a lot. I particularly enjoy reading books by authors who are “real” and approachable. If I find a book I absolutely adore, I try to find out more about the author behind the book. So yeah, it matters to me. 🙂
It’s the work that matters to me, not the author. Same for music.
If what George Packer says is true, and it can be, especially with a politically bias literary agent or publisher, then it is a sad day in fiction.
For fiction (art) is the last place to find truth, as politics is the first place to find lies.
If the gate keepers are initially tainted (bias) in a political manner, then they have already lost sight of truth.
And truth offends, it barks, it growls, and if we cannot be reciprocators of truth, regardless of political affiliation, then those literary gate keepers leave not only the youth, but the adult population destitute of true humanity.