The story so far: Chelsea Cain deleted her prior, extremely mildly testy posts because her publisher asked her to and because they do not have time to deal with all the hysteria she apparently whipped up, but then she repeats everything all again in attempting to justify her prior extremely mildly testy post and clarifies that she doesnt apologize for a single word of my earlier posts, which she had to delete so that her publisher would not have to deal with all the hysteria. New hysteria predictably ensues! The poor woman has a gun aimed at her own foot - someone stop her before she shoots again! (Once again, as someone who from time to time may have sent an email I later regretted, I have a great deal of sympathy for her, but a time comes when you just have to get off the computer, drink some warm milk, maybe go on a long hike and calm down.) As someone who in the past every once in a while lost his temper, I have a lot of sympathy (empathy?) for people who occasionally act like assholes. (And by the past, I include yesterday and the day before.) Im going to buy her most recent book (the one that didnt make the Times best-seller list in spite of great reviews and lots of early enthusiasm, which is what set off all these tantrums) just because I feel sorry for her. So maybe this whole being a jerk thing is working for her. But more broadly, its a disturbing development when we want our novelists to be nice. If Frederick Exley, William Styron, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever were alive today, I would expect their FaceBook pages to be filled with lots of 1 in the morning drunken rants and profanity much worse than the very mild umbridge expressed by the likes of Chelsea Cain at 1 in the morning (possibly drunk, because she has admitted in earlier posts that she drinks). Why? Because they were a pretty rotten bunch who wrote great books when they werent passed out in their own vomit. Frederick Exley, for example, wrote A Fans Notes, a great book about what a jerk he was, when drunk AND sober. I love the book but would not want to be his FaceBook friend. There are plenty of people who communicate badly with other people and have this or that psychological issue, whether inborn or acquired, who just simply cannot help it and dont understand what they are doing wrong and who therefore shouldnt get jobs as receptionists or restaurant greeters (or generally work with other people at all), and if they are lucky enough to become novelists, we should let them spend all day in their pajamas wrestling with their demons, and we should still enjoy their books, if their books are good, and, unless they are friends or family or loved ones, we shouldnt bother them while they are wrestling with their demons, or we should expect a rude response from time to time if we choose to try to befriend them over the internet. The idea of boycotting an authors books because shes not very nice all the time, or because she lost her temper once at 1 in the morning, is a pretty remarkable idea. To be clear, I am in favor of people being nice to everyone else all the time, but the fact is that a lot of novelists arent nice to everyone else all the time, and not reading their books if their books are good hurts no one but the person not reading their books. (For the record, I am always nice to my readers. Get in touch any time. Really.)
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 16:31:27 +0000
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