There’s a pretty clear delineation in the quality of Card’s work. Around the Bush administration, he really lost his enjoyment of writing fiction and went full into angry old man mode and the quality of his work took a nose dive.
If you’re going to read him, use that dividing line. He was an amazing author who lost it but kept writing.
On a personal note, I don’t know for sure a lot of the story, but I regard Card as a tragedy. There’s been a lot of bad things in his life and I think his latter years are largely shaped by the pain and anger he bears, along with a pretty large dose of insecurity.
I get that he has made himself easy to hate and he definitely used his gifts to hurt others but I think if people really understood him, he’d be more an object of pity. Dude’s got some deep in the bone hurt in him.
There’s a pretty clear delineation in the quality of Card’s work. Around the Bush administration, he really lost his enjoyment of writing fiction and went full into angry old man mode and the quality of his work took a nose dive.
If you’re going to read him, use that dividing line. He was an amazing author who lost it but kept writing.
On a personal note, I don’t know for sure a lot of the story, but I regard Card as a tragedy. There’s been a lot of bad things in his life and I think his latter years are largely shaped by the pain and anger he bears, along with a pretty large dose of insecurity.
I get that he has made himself easy to hate and he definitely used his gifts to hurt others but I think if people really understood him, he’d be more an object of pity. Dude’s got some deep in the bone hurt in him.