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A new moralism is gripping the literary world

persuasion.community

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Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#41

Post by undefined1 »

meanjeans wrote: post #24

I think the author here misrepresented the JK Rowling thing quite a bit. The idea is not to "scour" her texts for hidden anti-trans sentiment. The idea is that Rowling makes money off of selling her books and has built an empire, and the resultant power is now used by her as a platform to propagate anti-trans speech. Quite a different issue and also quite novel (pun unintended). Death of the Author is a concurrently…

it's not true that JK Rowling was or is doing that. that's a misrepresentation.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#43

Post by iamatworknow »

vcavallo wrote: post #32
karaterobot wrote: post #8

This article is ridiculous. The current wave of book burning, censorship and denunciation is completely different from previous ones, because I support the positions of the mob. I know that this wave of book burnings, censorship and denunciation will lead to a brighter tomorrow. I should point out that I don't support 100% of the positions of the mob, but I won't say which ones I disagree with because I don't want to…

Friendly reminder: It’s typically a good time to do some self-reflection when you find yourself saying “I support the positions of the mob”

I'm guessing the post you're replying to is sarcasm, or trolling, because it seems too perfectly absurd.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#44

Post by KittenInABox »

iamatworknow wrote: post #26
KittenInABox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying Woody Allen shouldn't produce his own memoir. I am saying its weird to conflate not desiring to purchase the nonfiction rights of a credibly accused child molester and then profit off of selling that same nonfiction to otherwise significantly more niche issues such as whether or not a white author should be writing black protagonists. The end of the essay even focuses on the race aspect! I just compl…

The "conflating" is addressed just a couple of paragraphs later: >The above cases are each distinct. You may agree with how the book world responded in some instances, and disagree in others. But what these cases convey is how much the literary establishment is struggling with a dread of “harm,” related both to content and authors. It speaks to the spreading sense that it thinks of itself as carrying out a moral miss…

I think saying that it's a "progressive activism" struggle to protest giving a credibly accused child molester money by purchasing his nonfiction is extremely weird, especially when it's being compared to something so innocuous.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#45

Post by moron4hire »

kapp_in_life wrote: post #22
ramraj07 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you are able to do that, is it truly censoring? No ones burning books here. To say the publishing industry is especially censoring today than before is outrageous. The point is that it self censored in the ethnicity and gender of its authors instead of the material. There’s only one nytimes best seller that can exist about a Mexican immigrant, now do you want that to be written by a white author or a Mexic…

>There’s only one nytimes best seller that can exist about a Mexican immigrant Why is that? Surely if both are well written/marketed enough they could both be bestsellers?

Also, it's not like "NYTimes Best Seller" is the gigantic accolade people make it out to be.

https://scribemedia.com/get-best-seller-list/

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#46

Post by dantillberg »

karaterobot wrote: post #8

This article is ridiculous. The current wave of book burning, censorship and denunciation is completely different from previous ones, because I support the positions of the mob. I know that this wave of book burnings, censorship and denunciation will lead to a brighter tomorrow. I should point out that I don't support 100% of the positions of the mob, but I won't say which ones I disagree with because I don't want to…

This line of thinking has me gravely concerned for the future of liberal democracy.

I don't know where parent lives in the world, but from my perspective in the United States, I deeply fear that there are many Americans who would support an anti-democratic coup (or mob) in a heartbeat so long as it aligned with enough of their political sentiments.

Edit: maybe parent is a little too-secretly sarcastic, but even so I suspect many others think like this unironically.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

meanjeans wrote: post #24

I think the author here misrepresented the JK Rowling thing quite a bit. The idea is not to "scour" her texts for hidden anti-trans sentiment. The idea is that Rowling makes money off of selling her books and has built an empire, and the resultant power is now used by her as a platform to propagate anti-trans speech. Quite a different issue and also quite novel (pun unintended). Death of the Author is a concurrently…

> The idea is that Rowling makes money off of selling her books and has built an empire, and the resultant power is now used by her as a platform to propagate anti-trans speech. Quite a different issue and also quite novel

People building fame in art and using that fame to advocate for causes, including the cause of preserving the marginalization of particular marginalized communities, is not novel.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#48

Post by titzer »

karaterobot wrote: post #8

This article is ridiculous. The current wave of book burning, censorship and denunciation is completely different from previous ones, because I support the positions of the mob. I know that this wave of book burnings, censorship and denunciation will lead to a brighter tomorrow. I should point out that I don't support 100% of the positions of the mob, but I won't say which ones I disagree with because I don't want to…

We have always been at war with Eastasia. Brawndo is what plants crave!

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#49

Post by scarecrowbob »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #6

It's gripping the entire world. When things are judged, not by how the author intended, but by the readers interpretation, it's a bad situation.

I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week.

Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all.

I have very little problem reading Hitler's text through my own critical lens, without adopting the authors intent. I have a very different view on the world than Hitler, and I have no problem at all saying that my views are less pathological than his and further, I feel like history has judged the dude rightly and quite harshly.

Is that a bad situation? And if not, how is this different than what you're describing?

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