Writers Gone Bad

I loved the Harry Potter books when they came out. Yes, I was one of those people who read them aloud to her children (through book 4, anyway) and I purchased copies on the very first day, often finishing them in a day or two because I inhaled them all in one giant breath. I haven’t stopped reading them out of protest. I just don’t like them anymore. I mean, maybe I should be the kind of person who is principled enough to stop reading a writer simply because they have done terrible things. But so far, I’ve never been put to this test. Not really.

I don’t mean that I’ve never loved an author who has turned out to be awful. See above. And I can make a long list of other authors who were equally terrible humans, even though sometimes it seemed the opposite when I first read their books. But what happens when I try to reread these old favorites of mine is—simply that I can’t get through them. I start to notice a whole bunch of the problems that are now obvious about their personal life in their writing. You can call this me reading it into their work now, but it is what it is.

I can’t read JK Rowling without hitting up right in the first chapter against her fatshaming. I noticed it before but it didn’t bother me. Because you know why? I was just as fatphobic as she is. I genuinely thought on some level that fatness indicated some kind of moral failing, that it meant people were greedy or selfish or unable to exert self-discipline. I know now this isn’t true because I’ve held the hand of multiple people as they’ve worked through internalized fatphobia. And I could tell you the reasons that they are fat, from medication or abuse or just not having access to good food, but I don’t need to because that’s not how it works.

I sometimes wish that I could enjoy the books of my childhood the way I did when I first read them but the truth is that I can’t anymore. Or if I can, it’s very rare and it doesn’t last very long. Authors are people of their time and books that sell well are books of their time and humans are, well, shitty in their time mostly and we are on an arc toward moral improvement. I know this because of what happens when I read books by old favorites of mine and can’t finish them. I know this when I cringe at how much I used to love Buffy. I never wrote a “Josh Whedon is my Master” shrt but that’s mostly because I don’t do that kind of merch. But in my garage are dozens of figures from the show and the whole series on DVD. And we could talk about Angel, too, but I won’t.

Neil Gaiman is another name here. I still remember how I felt a bit of a thrill when he reteweeted me. God, I never met the man. But I did love (some of) his books. Others I really didn’t get and now I understand 100% why I didn’t get them. Because there was lurking evil in them. But I didn’t see past the mask of “good guy” and “feminist writer” and I’m a little embarrassed about that. I would say I’m autistic, but I think I’m not the only person who was fooled. Because people like this work very hard to fool others.

And then there’s the more problematic reality. Bad people are people. Bad people have good parts. Many bad people are well aware of their true, good parts and try to make sure those are the parts that are shown publicly. This is what we all do, really. I know some writers I haven’t listed here who I think of as tortured and I won’t call out because they were good to me on a personal level when I was grieving my daughter’s loss and I will never forget that. Does that change their problematic nature? No, it does not. But it does change the reality that I see them as very, very human. Deeply flawed, but also human. And it also makes it impossible for me to read their books anymore, but somehow that doesn’t change what those books meant to a past version of me.