It’s hard for me to imagine a person who actually goes on Goodreads and rates a religious text of any kind or a political propaganda piece without it being some sort of statement. I am fine with any taste in fiction one might have, and don’t think that the art we enjoy necessarily reflects our morals, but something tells me that a person who went out of their way to 5-star every pro-fascism book there is migh be trying to make a point, and I should probably avoid them.
I try to read 50 pages of a paperback book and 50 more pages of a comic or a manga a day. It helps me to not drop whatever I’m reading and to get through my backlog faster without it consuming all my free time (if I let myself go, I will get stuck and just keep reading, ignoring my bodily needs and responsibilities).
I rant about their bullshit to my friends and keep reading, as long as there are other things that keep me interested. I don’t usually hate characters with a passion, mild dislike is the most I can muster (unless it’s something egregious or deeply personal), so I’m good.
Personal journals and memoirs tend to be like that. The person writing them often did not intend for them to be seen by others in the first place, unless they specifically wanted their memoir published. They reveal a person at their best and their worst. Thinking that an artist whose art speaks to you must be similar to you in character, compatible with you or a person you should strife to be is a very common misconception. They might be all of that, or they might be not. Someone might be a great artist and a terrible person, and that’s a perfectly realistic combination. Private journals do not exist to be guides to life. Many artists out there were tortured souls whose life was full of trauma, misery, bad decisions and struggles with mental health. It’s great to look up to them in terms of art, but emulating their life or looking to them for actual advice is not healthy. Sylvia Plath wasn’t a therapist, she was a clinically depressed young woman who took her own life. If you do not connect with her and find some of her actions immoral, that’s a perfectly valid opinion to have about someone, but her journals weren’t written to teach other young women how to live their lives, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Use them to make observations about the realities of the time period, life events that might have influenced the writer’s art, or just treat it as a vintage vent blog. It’s better to turn to a professional therapist if you need genuine advice about navigating life as a neurodivergent person.