Knowing About the Author ...

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Do you prefer to know something about the private life of an author before you read their books? Does knowing something about their lives affect how you perceive their works? (Knowning that Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor, does that bring more emotional reactions to his fitional pieces?) Conversely, do you not read some authors because of who they are/what they said? (Er, I'm pretty much talking fiction, here - I can understand not buying something by Bill Reilly just because of who he is.)

For example, now that I know Tony Horwitz is married to Geraldine Brooks, I feel differently about him - because I like her writing so much I tend to think that she'd have good taste in who she chose to marry, and that she'd not marry someone who isn't a good writer, therefore he's a better writer, in my mind, now. Kind of. (Gosh, that really makes me sound/feel shallow. Maybe I don't want to go down this path after all.)

Or do you prefer to know nothing (or next-to-nothing) about an author?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 30 January 2004 06:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I do--it's fun for me to read a slew of books by an author and also, while I'm doing that, learn a lot about the author, so that as background to the story of the individual books I'm also getting the story of the individual author. That's just me, though--I'm more likely to go on a specific-author binge than a genre binge or a subject binge. I like to get to know a person along with getting to know a bunch of books.
And then there are certain writers for whom the bio. details are VERY important, though they tend to be non-fiction or at least heavily polemical writers. If Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor/theologian who was martyred by the Nazis, talks about how following Jesus may lead to societal disapproval, I'm inspired. If some comfortable, monied American conservative idiot talks about it, I'm nauseated. Same with Gandhi and passive-resistance--I'd think "This man's suggestions are ludicrous" if I didn't have his example in front of me.

― Phil Christman, Friday, 30 January 2004 16:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Knowing a bit about the author can help you understand the story as a whole, or it could just piss you off and scoff as you past the book in your local bookstore, double edge sword methinks.

― Cupie (Cupie), Friday, 30 January 2004 21:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I pretty much avoid learning anything about an author, if I can - for me, my opinions tend to be heavily colored by what I read and hear (kinda Babbitt-ish, I'm afraid) - so I avoid most book reviews and so forth - and if someone recommends a book, I'll just track it down, not ask much about the text, for fear that I'll end-up with preconceived notions and not be able to see the story for itself.

Phil, I can see your point about the importance of an author's bio, but then I wonder if that makes one more or less inclined to give creedence to a work based not on its own merit, but on the merit of the author?

Er, actually, that is exactly what I was asking when I posted this question - wish that I'd been able to phrase it better, then.

Cupie - I agree.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 31 January 2004 03:57 (twenty-two years ago)

;)

― Cupie (Cupie), Saturday, 31 January 2004 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I was thinking about this some more last night, and it occured to me that although I have greatly enjoyed John Irving's work for years (see my "name"), at some point last year I read something he'd written about current authors being crap (well, that's a paraphrase, of course) and it made me quite pissy about him - and now I've not gone back and re-read any of his works, which is very abnormal for me (as is evidenced by my quoting A Widow For One Year at disturbingly frequent [and often inappropriate] intervals).

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 31 January 2004 18:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I like to try to ignore details about the personal life of an author, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I think it has very little bearing on their work, from a reader's perspective.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Monday, 2 February 2004 00:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Proust v. Saint-Beauve (was it Proust who betrayed his own argument or the Proust-a-philes obsessiveness with his life that did? Irony either way.)

― Girolamo Savonarola, Monday, 2 February 2004 01:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I've been disappointed in reading biographies of some of my favourite writers to find them pettier and more sordid in real life than I expected from their books.

Kerouac in particular is a problem. In books like "On The Road", "Dharma Bums", and "Desolation Angels" the alter-ego protagonist is the stuff heroes are made of. But in biographies he comes over as a lush who mainly lived with his mother, nursed some right-wing views, and failed to live up to the ideals peoposed in his books. That takes nothing away from those ideals, but it adds nothing to them either.

I read a biography of Raymond Chandler and also a book of his letters. For all his good points he was a terrible snob and an alcoholic. Also he was much less good-looking than Philip Marlow and dated much less good-looking women.

But some writers do, for me, live up to their writing. Arthur Miller, for example.

― R the bunged up with jollop of V (Jake Proudlock), Monday, 2 February 2004 14:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I really don't read biographies, especially of authors, but I'm always reading interviews with my favorite authors. Of course few interviews give the insight I look for.

― Jessa (Jessa), Monday, 2 February 2004 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

>Phil, I can see your point about the importance of an author's bio, but then I wonder if that makes one more or less inclined to give creedence to a work based not on its own merit, but on the merit of the author?

Probably, if we're talking about fiction. I mean, if a novel by Henry James is not that great but I can see something in it that foreshadows something he'd later do in a novel I love, then it does sort of become more interesting to me (like learning about a good friend's childhood). Personally, that doesn't bother me at all--it's always a pleasure to be able to see something in a book, no matter how much of an overall failure it is, and you usually remain rational/objective enough to say (if anyone asks you about the book) "Well, it's not that great, it's just interesting because of the similarities to [X]." Among music fans, these sorts of situations are where you talk about "the fan-only album," and nobody (I think) sees anything wrong with it.

With non-fiction: well, the Gandhi example again. If an author has something to say that sounds absolutely unworkable and crazy, yet you look at their life and find that, lo and behold, they worked it out and they weren't crazy, then you have to take the book more seriously. So in that case it actually helps you, I think, to rate the ideas more objectively/carefully.

But you wanted to talk about fiction, and I keep changing the subject. Sorry.

― Phil Christman, Monday, 2 February 2004 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

No, I really dislike knowing about the author. A piece of art should be able to stand away from the author. If the author is a good one, then the idea will come on a lot stronger, and only a poor piece of work relies on the authors non-writing personality to propel it onwards. I've never liked an "I mean it, maaaaan" philosophy, especially in literature.

― Johnney B, Monday, 2 February 2004 20:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Phil, please do talk about non-fiction here. When I originally posted I was thinking about fiction, but that doesn't mean that that is where I want to keep the discussion.

I find myself thinking, oddly enough of De Sade, here. Is there an additional horror (or titillation, based on one's point of view) in his writings if one knows that he wasn't just writing about sadistic activities, but actually pursuing them with unwilling victims?

Or (sorry, my mind is really wandering this afternoon) - is it important to know the gender of an author? Are Ron Hansen's insights into "women" in Mariette in Ecstacy somehow tainted (or strengthened) by knowing his gender? Is a book with a first person male narrator strengthened, weakened, or unaffected by knowing that the author is female? (I guess that we're venturing into the realm of George Sands here, and of J.K. Rowling not being willing to use her full-name because she was concerned that people wouldn't take her work seriously.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 2 February 2004 21:59 (twenty-two years ago)

It's like Bukowski: it's great to read about his crazy antics, but when you realise that he's actually just a massive alcoholic sleaze, it loses a little lustre.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Monday, 2 February 2004 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd rather judge the writing first. If I know things about the author I do my best to put them out of my mind till I've decided whether I like the actual work. Funny thing is, if someone's work annoys me then their personal life seems tainted by it, and if they're "nice" it annoys me even more; if their work is good I lean toward what Barnes's narrator in Flaubert's Parrot almost admitted he felt: "Well, maybe he really NEEDED to kill his wife/ that Boy Scout!"

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 00:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess part of my point is, there doesn't have to be an either-or here. Some books, for whatever reason (temperament, etc.), it may not matter to you what the author was like--for example, I don't feel any curiosity whatsoever about Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nor do I really care that much about Martin Amis's teeth or his prep-school romances. I appreciate their work and I read their books, but I don't read *them*.
And then there are certain authors whose style, or consistent choices of subject matter, or whatever, fit me so well that I become interested in who they were--there's a fit in sensibility. Or their sensibility is so thoroughly *unlike* mine as to be sort of fascinating. So I look into their lives, read old interviews, and read "minor" works for more insight, just because I think I like them (or I don't like them but I'm curious). A desire to understand people (character) is part of what drives us to read fiction, at least some of the time, isn't it? So it follows that some of the time, that interest will generalize to the person who created the fiction. (Currently I'm reading the new John Gardner biography, which will test that theory. He's one of my favorite authors, but I guess he was sort of an asshole, at least if you happened to be married to him. Still, knowing this hasn't really ruined any of his works for me--it has helped me to understand why *Mickellson's Ghosts* is so much more crazy than his other works.)
On non-fic.: Well, with the Marquis De Sade, I'm pretty thoroughly disgusted by what I've read of the works, and knowing about the guy himself certainly strengthens that response. So any pleasure or interest I (doubt I) could've gotten from reading him in some sort of allegorized or clinical way is thus mitigated by knowing about him--so that when people defend his works by saying "Oh, don't take it so literally" or "It's just *fantasy*," I react by thinking, "It wasn't for him (and anyway, why would I want to dwell in the fantasies of a murderous aristocrat?)." So yeah, the example of the author's life affects my reading negatively as well as positively. Sometimes I think the author is almost a canary in the coal mine of their own belief system (Ayn Rand to thread).
And again there are cases where knowledge of the author *doesn't* affect my reading of her or his nonfiction. Nothing I've learned about Nietzsche has seriously influenced my reading of him, though he's certainly a writer on whom one is tempted to take strong and total positions. It must have to do with temperament.
I'll be quiet on the author's-gender question, because I'm quite curious too. Are there male writers whose portraits of women are found by women to be especially convincing? (I'm guessing not John Updike.)

― Phil Christman, Tuesday, 3 February 2004 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Geez, I'm sorry that was so long.

― Phil Christman, Tuesday, 3 February 2004 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

(tangent: I've always sensed that in learning to write fiction it's a good idea to dive early and hard into writing across the gender line, because it's difficult, so it must be good exercise. Natch, your first thirty or so attempts at it should never see the light of day.)

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 3 February 2004 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

>(tangent: I've always sensed that in learning to write fiction it's a >good idea to dive early and hard into writing across the gender line, >because it's difficult, so it must be good exercise. Natch, your first >thirty or so attempts at it should never see the light of day.)

That sounds right. I'll have to remember this the next time I'm writing, and grasp the bull by the horns, only it won't be a bull.

― Phil Christman, Tuesday, 3 February 2004 23:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Grasp the bull by the udders?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 00:01 (twenty-two years ago)

*laughing*

I (once upon a time) took a couple of courses on rhetoric and gender (one was even titled "gendered rhetoric", oddly enough) and some of the generalizations that people make about male/female writing were quite interesting - such as women tending to include modifiers and to think of the group, where as men tend to state directly and think only for themselves (GENERALIZATIONS, people). But it seems to me that our writing changes more as we age, read more, and study more - I can't recall the last time that I wrote anything where I ended many sentences with exclamation points - but that's a sign of young, female writing. (And I am more aware of my tendency to modify just about everything I write, too *grin*.)

So just how does one go about assuming a new gendered voice? (I ask because I don't have a flare for fiction and so I've not experimented much in that area.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 07:03 (twenty-two years ago)

That's interesting, because the one time I did try to write in the voice of an ex-girlfriend, I actually used a lot of modifiers. So maybe that's Law One, and now someone adventurous can try to write an immediately-identifiably female voice with no modifiers at all, grin.

― Phil Christman, Wednesday, 4 February 2004 18:57 (twenty-two years ago)

what is a modifier?

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 19:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's a link to an interesting (though rather dry) research paper on the topic:

This article is much shorter:

A modifier is a word/term/phrase that is to soften, strengthen, or otherwise change the emphasis of a statement. For example:

"I am hungry." "I am very hungry."
"This car is blue." "I think that this car is blue."
"Her assistance is worthless." "Her assistance is sometimes worthless."
"I won't talk to him." "I would prefer to not talk to him."

The generalization is that women tend to use more modifiers then men, especially in verbal discourse (the same is true for written discourse, but there are different wording structures, there). I know that I tend to use modifiers quite frequently. (In the previous sentence, "I know that" and "quite frequently" can be considered as modifiers [and "can be considered as" is also a modifying phrase].)

Thanks, Phil. You made me spit orange juice on my keyboard.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 5 February 2004 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

>Thanks, Phil. You made me spit orange juice on my keyboard.

If I maybe somehow contributed to your getting maybe a little dab of orange juice on your keyboard, I'm feeling kind of really sorry about that. K?

― Phil Christman, Thursday, 5 February 2004 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow - wonder what I did to make those links not show-up. Actually, I don't want to know. I'll feel like an idiot, then, and I want to feel brilliant this evening.

I have forgiven you, Phil, as has my keyboard (and my hedgehog enjoyed crawling all over the the keyboard, licking up the spit-out juice, while I was looking for the papetowels and blow-dryer). That's what I get for laughing so early in the morning.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 6 February 2004 03:10 (twenty-two years ago)

"So just how does one go about assuming a new gendered voice? (I ask because I don't have a flare for fiction and so I've not experimented much in that area.)"

Bah to me for being so unspecific: what I meant was, if you're female it's a good idea to try a male protagonist, and vice versa. Couldn't tell ya how to change the gender of your personal, nonfictional style. I almost punched my computer the 50th time gendergenie told me I was a man.

PS YOU HAVE A HEDGEHOG?!?!?!??!?!?! AHHHHHHHH! HEDGEHOG! HEDGEHOG! OH MAN I WANT ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 7 February 2004 03:12 (twenty-two years ago)

*laughing very hard* Thanks for the clarification on the gender/voice thing (er, and here I must apologize, again, for the messed-up hyperlinks), Ann. I think that with nonfiction it's easiest to have a gender-neutral approach - but that depends on the genre. I mean, a travelogue is going to have more of a voice from the author. I guess it's 'cause I tend to work with government documents that I see more of the gender-neutral wordings.

And yes, I have a Hedgie - Miss Penelope Anne. Here's a photo of her:

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 7 February 2004 04:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Er, sorry - I suck at HTML. Here she is, really:

http://www.lauraslist.org/Pets/031027%20-%20Penelope%201-3%20-%20Small.jpg

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 7 February 2004 04:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I LOVE HER, THANK YOU! PET PAT!

OK, I'm stopping now before I turn this into ILE, I promise.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 7 February 2004 05:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Nope, I really hate reading about authors private lifes and thoughts. You always find out that they were pretty wretched.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 7 February 2004 11:00 (twenty-two years ago)

*laughing quite hard* No problem, Ann - just let me know when you need a dose of hedgie photos and I'll send some along - I'm kind of a doting mother and all and so there's lots and lots of photos of her. 'Sides, she's photogenic, too.

But back to the topic on hand - I guess I do find it interesting to look at someone like Dawn Powell and to trace her fiction works along with what was happening in her personal life, to see how one affected the other (which was maybe one of the points of Flaubert's Parrot?).

jel, what about someone like Mark Twain? I think that his personal life was pretty incredible.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 7 February 2004 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm surprised by people who feel antagonistic to any connectedness between a work of fiction and the author's life. It feels a little undergraduate to me (eg., those youngsters who lap up Modernism the first time they study it; who seem to take to it as a refuge). This isn't meant to sound/read churlish, as I speak from experience. Now that I'm a bit older, I can't understand why someone would make a conscious choice not to find out more about an author that they've really enjoyed. It seems to me that any fiction worth a darn has some serious and strong connection to the author's view of themselves and others. In this sense, reading their fiction is itself involved in
knowing something about them. So why stop with the fiction?
I'm now much more inclined to find out what I can about an author. But if anything, this is pretty much limited to interviews, biographies and journals. My thoughts about this issue come from two areas: one is the issue of "vertical" or "horizontal" research. Wanting to know more about an author seems to me to fall within the vertical inclination (so perhaps people who want to hold the author at arm's length are more horizontally inclined (if this distinction makes sense for fiction)). But my other memory of this is reading three things: Belloc's bio of Perec, ???'s bio of Anne Sexton and the Journals of John Cheever. All were delightfully rewarding, and pictured three very different (yet authentic) writers. But then again, a fellow book-luvin friend of mine wrote a letter to an author they greatly admired (James Salter), and was delirious when JS sent back a lil' thankyu note. That seemed more about infatuation than anything: I don't know if he would've been so willing to do the same to John Cheever.

Apologies for the ramble.

― David Joyner (David Joyner), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, I met JM Coetzee who won the Nobel prize last year. He came to read when I was in college, and I had dinner with him.

During the dinner I told him that I had been in City Lights (Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookstore) the previous summer and hadn't been able to find his [Coetzee's] title, "The Life and Times of Michael K." And I'd gone to the register to ask, finding there three copies in a glass case under a sign that said "Ferlinghetti Recommends..."

I told Coetzee this and he said, in the most condescending and asinine manner possible "obviously, it's a damn fine book." I smiled, Coetzee turned away from me and ignored me the rest of the night. Assface.

― Atila the Honeybun (Atila the Honeybun), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 04:28 (twenty-two years ago)

If we're trading horror stories about meeting authors whose books we liked, I've got one re: Richard Ford. But maybe this should be another thread...(?)

― David Joyner (David Joyner), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 05:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Start one, David! I've got a good story too.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 13:25 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

IPOW, i love your hedgehog! I also love thinking about Mary Shelley sitting with her notepad on her lap and pages and pages of "Frankenstein" coming out, whilst Percy Bysshe sits at his writing "Clouds"....

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Saturday, 10 April 2004 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Generally, the more I know about an author the more I hate their guts. So, I usually find out only the bare minimum about an author.

― S. Asher (StephA), Saturday, 10 April 2004 23:11 (twenty-two years ago)

S. Asher, that is my problem too, and I'm going to adopt your strategy

― aq, Sunday, 11 April 2004 06:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I know I couldn't have read the narnia books over and over if I knew CS was a rabid Christian

― sandy mc (sandy mc), Monday, 12 April 2004 08:25 (twenty-two years ago)

(as is evidenced by my quoting A Widow For One Year at disturbingly frequent [and often inappropriate] intervals)

Which, apropos of nothing but itself, is partly being made into a film

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 12 April 2004 10:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Reading Edna O'Brien's short bio of James Joyce put me off reading anything and everything he's written. And I'm really glad I read all of Barbara Pym's novels before I read A Very Private Eye, which is mostly excerpts from her journals. So I'm much happier knowing little to nothing about the author.

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 13 April 2004 00:32 (twenty-two years ago)

The old friend of mine who put me onto Philip Pullman's magnificent His Dark Materials listened to a radio interview with PP after book 2 came out. He's not been able to even start the last of the trilogy since then.

I can't remember being put off someone I like already by things I learn about them, but there are people I was put off trying in advance - Mailer and Pound are good examples - and I've never given them a fair shake since. Generally I am simply uninterested. It's easier with authors where the work is there without any significant biographical trappings necessarily interfering. I find it more difficult with painters and sculptors - I want to read books on those I love to help me understand and appreciate the works, as well as to have decent repros of those works; but this almost inevitably comes in monographs telling me far more than I want to know about the life.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 14 April 2004 20:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, you can't tell us that and then not tell us why. I've never read or heard an interview with Pullman. Is he awful?

In a great reverse of that, I now want to read more James Lee Burke because I met John Connolly's mother and she told me that Burke was always really nice to John when he was starting out as a writer, and very complimentary about his work. Which I think is very civil of him.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 15 April 2004 10:12 (twenty-two years ago)

This thread has cheered me up (because I hate HDM)

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 15 April 2004 10:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I changed my attitude upon the importance of author's background by reading "Sostiene pereira" by A.Tabucchi (don't want to confuse gendre with other threads but the S.P. can bes ummarized in an aging journalist being stirred out of his apathy in 1938 Lisbon by an underground revolutionary, that explains to main character why his readings of non-"worthy" authors are counter-revolutionnary.)

Well, since then it kinda left a sign, for example: can't bring myself to read acclaimed Celine's "Au bout de la nuit" for the author collaborationist past...

― Erykah Jasmine (erykah), Thursday, 15 April 2004 10:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, he thought he was a horrible person. I've not read or listened to any interviews with him mostly out of fear of having the same reaction.

Related is a mirror-pair of anecdotes in Sam Delany's wonderful novel Dhalgren, one about loving an author and then hearing his voice and finding the prose unreadably leaden ever afterwards, and the flipside of never being able to read an author then hearing her voice and it all clicking.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 16 April 2004 20:38 (twenty-two years ago)

No NO Erykah Jasmine. Read Celine's "Au bout de la nuit". You will not become a bad person. One day you have to face darkness. Face it by reading this book. You will learn something about the human race, and afterwards you will be ready for anything. ANYTHING.
(And don't have to use those Prozaks ever!)

― Ingolfur Gislason (kreator), Sunday, 18 April 2004 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

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