I was talking about The Great Gatsby with a friend and she said the author, Scott Fitzgerald, is so naive. I said why? She replied that he is so in love with Gatsby that he can’t see Gatsby’s flaws.
I realized that she believed Nick Carraway, the narrator, was the voice of Fitzgerald. Of course, this is not really wrong. He likely is, in some ways, such as when philosophizing about the American dream. And there was a real person, Max Gerlach, who is the real life version of Gatsby. But Gatsby is not Gerlach and Fitzgerald is not Nick. Or, rather, we just don’t know how much these real life characters are in the story. It is fun to speculate. But for me it confuses things more than explain them, in terms of understanding the book. Yet it has made me think. Perhaps Nick is more like Scott when he was younger or had just met Gerlach…Who knows?
There are other examples, of course, which are much more controversial. Like when a person writes so well and sympathetically about the feelings of someone who behaves in socially or morally unacceptable ways (e.g., a pedophile, thief, murderer). Does that mean they approve of these things or people? Or want the readers to do so?
So that is my question to you: Do you ever struggle with separating the person of the writer from the voice in the book or particular characters? Do you ever feel differently about the writer after reading a book that has some unconventional ideas or characters you find very unlikable or behaviors that shock you?
Do you ever struggle with separating the person of the writer from the voice in the book or particular characters?
There are times when a character is an author insert/mouthpiece and recognition and criticism of that can be valid but being unable to separate every narrator or main PoV character from the author is problematic in my opinion.
Do you ever feel differently about the writer after reading a book that has some unconventional ideas or characters you find very unlikable or behaviors that shock you?
This one depends more on the conclusions the book draws about those ideas/characters/behaviours and again that’s less being unable to separate the narrative from the author and more about me just not enjoying that authors work.
No, but I think a lot of people do. I think this is why so many people think Lolita is problematic.
No not at all. For every problematic character, there is a good character as well. I’ll never understand why people choose to judge the author by the “bad” character and never think that they wrote the good guy, too. They get judged for having a good imagination.
Only when I find out the author actually is/was a piece of shit or likely was - like Marion Zimmer Bradley - allegedly a pedophile, by her own children.
Or if it’s ridiculously obvious the author is pushing an agenda
It really depends. I can do that with some authors, but anyone who’s read Lovecraft knows that sometimes that just isn’t possible.
Some authors are just constructing a narrator, and some actually use the characters or overall story as a lens. If it’s the former, then you should be able to separate them.