So, recently, I've been thinking about three writers whose personalities and actions are more than reprehensible. Yet they're also important in either the development or the popularisation of certain genre aspects. I don't want to mention them by name, because I feel they get too much exposure as it is. Instead, I'll be using initials taken from their names. It won't fool everyone, but it'll be a way for me to discuss the work without giving undue exposure. It is also a chance for me to talk about something that clicked with me recently; the fact that, long before either I or the general public knew about these authors' undesirable traits, I didn't click fully with their work.
Let's start with N. N is a writer who has an intriguing imagination, and for a time was something of a darling in their genre. Now...things have changed, rightly so. But while I was recommended this writer's work for a long time, the few titles I tried just didn't resonate. The novel "N" just never resonated with me on a basic level. A different novel "AG" was similarly odd, in that everyone praised it but I just didn't like it. I also tried a collaborative novel this writer created with someone else, and again I didn't jibe. A different piece of fiction, C, was interesting to experience once but not something I wanted to return to. To be blunt, there was a background to the writing that felt off. I can't describe it any other way without being more explicit about who the writer is.
Now let's move on the next author, K. K created a very popular series that I admit was one of my early reads, something that got me into long-form stories. I experienced the first few through audiobooks with a narration that was incredible. Then I read the remaining parts of the series myself. I won't deny, it was a fun ride, and it's become apocalyptically popular. But the more I went on, the more I realised that early love for it was rooted more in the narrator's performance in the audiobook than the books themselves. Something about the writing just didn't resonate. Were they a factor in my early reading journey? Yes. Would I read K's work again? No, before I fully realised what kind of person K was, I had tried other pieces of fiction they had created, and it didn't resonate. It just seemed so...pedestrian. There wasn't a spark, a feeling of "this writing has depth".
Next and finally we reach L. L is something of a genre codifier for certain aspects of horror (yes, I'm partly spoiling here, but this one's also the oldest author and long dead). This writer had...issues. A lot of issues. Many of them extreme by the standards of their time, let alone ours. And before I knew about them, when I first encountered their writing in an abridged and somewhat sanitised form, I thought "Well I like the ideas, but this writer desperately needed a copyeditor because this prose is all over the place." As I got access to their uncensored work, and better understood where the otherwise compelling content came from, I realised that many of the aspects that are beloved are tied to that writer's now-unacceptable opinions and prejudices.
Now, because I've been comparatively oblique when talking about these writers, you may think I'm ashamed to have had them in my reading life. And that's not true. They were steps in my reading and writing journey for one reason or another, be it a style I didn't jibe with or a motivator to raise my reading ability after many long years of it being subpar due to my dyslexia.
With hindsight (title drop), I see that my instinctive initial feelings about all these writers was perhaps reflective of what they were like as people, and how they very much do not align with my beliefs. It's a strange kind of "I wondered why so-and-so didn't linger or click with me". I've had other similar reactions to certain actors, certain films, certain games. Just an instinctive repulsion. With hindsight, I can say to myself "oh yeah, so and so wasn't a nice person" or "yeah, that figures, the one who wrote this was horrible actually". But that leads to the dangerous habit of claiming foreknowledge or greater media literacy than you actually have.
This is just one person's tale of how, long before I or other people knew of the nasty deeds or opinions associated with these writers, I read their work. And on some deep level I couldn't then explain or understand, it didn't jibe.
