{"id":8985,"date":"2021-08-07T20:49:23","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T03:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=8985"},"modified":"2022-01-07T00:43:57","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T08:43:57","slug":"do-i-want-to-know-the-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/do-i-want-to-know-the-author\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I want to know the author?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

As a budding author (can you be a “bud” at my age?), I read a lot about what I’m supposed to do. Chief among the advice is to have a “social media presence” and an “email list”. I’m supposed to populate these forms of communication with tidbits and upcoming writings and fluff, designed to keep me connected to my “readers”.

Since I’m not published yet, that’s seriously on the back burner, but now I think of it when I look at my favorite authors. Anne Perry, Kate Morton, Rachel Cusk — I love their work. Am I on their mail lists? Do I keep up with their social media? It never occurred to me.

\"\"<\/a>So tonight I’m hovering a finger over a button to join one of my favorite author’s email lists, and I’m thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n

Many years ago, I had to deal with Rousseau. I loved his work. Then I found out that this author of one of our great books on natural education, “Emile”, and a supporter of mothers breastfeeding their own babies in a time of wet-nurses, had abandoned his own children to foundling hospitals.<\/p>\r\n

It’s possible to discover horrible things about the authors (and artists and presidents and saints and celebrities) we admire. Thomas Jefferson<\/a> had sex with his slave. Emily Dickinson drowned kittens<\/a>. Charles Dickens was monstrous to his wife<\/a>. Martin Luther King Jr<\/a>. and Albert Einstein<\/a> were womanizers. Andy Warhol was not only weird, he was cruel<\/a>. Bernardo Bertolucci . . . well, you know.<\/p>\r\n

About half the celebrities I’ve met and worked with have been rude. People are just people. I don’t think I’d enjoy an evening with George Bernard Shaw, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, or Woody Allen. That doesn’t mean I don’t admire their work.<\/p>\r\n

The big question, of course, is the extent to which we can, and should, separate someone’s life from their deeds. On the one hand, I know you can be a slaveholder and still be a good person. On the other, I might refuse to buy products from someone whose actions I find morally reprehensible. But by and large, I fall on the side of separation. People’s ideas may be universal and immortal — people themselves are fallible, and finite.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

So, back to living authors. It feels callous that I’m not really interested in them, in who they are, their foibles and personal life. But I’m not — I’m interested in their creations, the products of their minds, the characters and stories they devise. I’ll follow what they publish because I want to read their work, and I’m happy to read or tune in for gems about writing if they’ve a mind to share.<\/p>\r\n

But some of the things I’ve been told (don’t have a publicity photo with your chin on your hand, be sure to post pictures of your pets, talk about your hobbies) have nothing to do with my writing. Perhaps such trends are just indicative of today’s societal expectations in a time where emotion triumphs over reason and everything is personal, although I suspect it’s long been a problem — this promo by Hemingway<\/a> is awkward enough that Scribner’s must have had a lot of trouble getting him to say the right things.<\/p>\r\n

I think I’ll give the email list a miss.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a budding author (can you be a “bud” at my age?), I read a lot about what I’m supposed to do. Chief among the advice is to have a “social media presence” and an “email list”. I’m supposed to populate these forms of communication with tidbits and upcoming writings and fluff, designed to keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8985"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8997,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8985\/revisions\/8997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}