Monday, April 20, 2015

This Writer Hoo Ha Stuff Goin on

I hate Socialism.  With a white hot fury.  All flavors of it.  Murderous tyrants, all.  I joined the Navy with the goal in mind of leading 12 men on missions over the North Atlantic for the purpose of killing 300 Russian Socialists underwater to keep them from killing 30,000,000 Americans.  The Cold War ended and I didn't have to do that. 

I like reading Eric Flint

I'd read and re-read his stuff all day long, but I'd never vote for him to be in charge.

The Socialism he cottons to doesn't impact my enjoyment of his work one whit.  Well maybe a quarter of a whit.  So instead of enjoying his stuff 100%, I enjoy it 99.75%.  Well within the margin of error.

Sure, he is sympathetic to Socialistic ideals in his work, but it's not all pervasive and it's not trying to convert me in whatever way.  The bad guys in his works also have a hint of tyranny and socialism.  And that makes them bad guys.  Well, the tyranny part, certainly.

I don't 'get' the whole "eschew the artist because of his views" thing.  Like Wagner being tainted because Hitler liked him and he held typical 19th German Gentile anti-semitism.  Or H Rider Haggard seeming too white, too Imperialist, too South African to be enjoyable.  Or refusing to listen to Maya Angelou poetry because she was an 'angry black woman.'  Reject their work because you don't like the Sturm and Drang, the stilted language, the hackneyed simplistic imagery.  Or enjoy them because you find it rousing, is able to transport you to another time and place, or lilts along in a manner pleasing to your senses.

But that's just me.

Same with Atheism vs The Devout.  I don't care either way unless you are annoying to me about it.  No one likes rabid fervent proselytizers.  Among believers too.

2 comments:

Bob said...

Depends on how the message is presented. I don't mind reading about someone else's favored ideology, but when the artist willfully trashes the things I hold dear, I'm not going to reward him/her with my hard-earned dollars; there's plenty of other authors out there that want as many fans as possible, regardless of how they think.

Angus McThag said...

It's not the art I eschew, it's the paying a socialist artist for their art.

Not that they are, in any way, anything but rabid capitalists when it comes to owning and selling their work.

So really it's a refusal to reward hypocrites.