(urth) Wolfe: Misogynist? and accessibility

[Jeff Wilson]

Daniel D Jones wrote:
> On Thursday 19 October 2006 01:02, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>> Jack Redelfs wrote:
>>> I just don't see how we can neatly say that a
>>> chivalrous author will refuse to put his female
>>> characters in harms way. That's like saying only
>>> an anti-semite would write novels about Auschwitz,
>>> isn't it?
>> If an author complusively wrote novels about Jews being tortured and
>> killed, I'd at least suspect him of anti-semitism.
> 
> So you suspect Agatha Christie of harboring a secret desire to murder? 

No more so than most people. Murder mysteries were already established 
as a category of polite literature before she chose to write them; 
misogyny isn't.


> I'd 
> shudder to hear what you must suspect of Stephen King and Clive Barker. :-)

With Stephen King, I don't suspect, I know he's personally tickled by, 
for example, seeing authority figured being eaten by vicious animsls, 
because he cops to it. King is a subscriber to the theory that a 
writer's hangups emerge in his work, to the extent that they can 
identify the author of a story in which they appear. It's part of his 
musing in DANSE MACABRE and appears as a plot device in "The Ballad Of 
The Flexible Bullet", and particular hangups are discussed in the 
commentary sections of some of his story collections.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >