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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

> Let's not forget that Asimov had a questionable lifestyle [0].

I already know that sexual harassment and abuse of power are bad. If someone uncovers such behavior in a living writer, I will react appropriately, by demanding justice for the victims and doing all I can to change the writer's behavior. Finding out about Asimov's behavior doesn't change that.

As for Asimov, he is dead. There's nothing I can do to change his behavior anymore. And I'm not going to stop admiring his literary works because of his bad behavior.

I think this is a valid stance if the writers now uncovered tendecies don't start to colour the decisions they took in their writing.

Good writing remains good writing, but realizing why somebody wrote something might just be something that cannot be undone for the informed reader.

I think you can see some of this sort of thing in his later writing but most of it is unaffected IMO. The other thing to remember about dead writers is that they're products of their surrounding culture. People freak out about HP Lovecraft for example but American culture was extremely different then.

HP Lovecraft's racism most definitely drove his writing and not in small ways. It courses through his narratives. The Shadow over Innsmouth, for instance, is literally entirely about the evils of cross-breeding with "lesser" people. The whole and full picture of terror from "the other" wouldn't gel as it does in his stories without his starkly racist ideas about the world.

That doesn't invalidate his art, in fact I think a knowledge of his profound racism adds another level of terror to his stories, in the realization that racism is a primordial horror that can and does haunt us all. To wave all this away by claiming he was simply a "product of his time" is to profoundly misunderstand his writings.

I read a lot of Lovecraft as a young teenager, and it was only years later that popular culture started to call out his racism. When it started to gain traction, I remember thinking, "um... well, duh."

Lovecraft is interesting in that regard. His racism is so interwoven with what makes the books good, that there is no real way to read one without the other.

It is far more problematic with authors where the trait that is later "discovered" always seemed like an alien stain in their work. E.g. someone who wrote all about freedom and equality, but has some weird misogynistic moments in the books that everybody glossed over before, but now they stain the whole idea..

I think it's very sad that because Lovecraft died so young the mellowed views he adopted on race never got to make their way into his body of writing.

I just skimmed through the article and I definitely don’t condone the behavior in the parts I read. But wasn’t he also pretty progressive in terms of women’s rights and gay rights, especially considering that time?

Obviously, he can still be progressive and an asshole since those aren’t mutually independent.

You should avoid reading the Declaration of Independence. I recently discovered that George Washington was a slave owner[0]. Not good, George. Not good.

[0]: https://study.com/learn/lesson/george-washington-slaves.html

Fun fact: George Washington wasn't one of the signatories of the Declaration.

> Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 African Americans during his adult life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

Wrong person, but the argument still applies.

How does this affect the quality of his novels? I will keep enjoying his books, and admiring Caravaggio paintings, who killed someone in a duel I think, and listening to musicians who had a controversial life (most of them, once you take out the boring ones).

Because liking an unperson's work makes you a bad person by association.

I'm afraid that I myself have become irredeemably tainted by merely reading a comment thread populated by some bad people who like an unperson's work. I will have to perform the ritual cleansing which wherein I will be disintegrated into individual molecules.

For now tweeting your disapproval in the strongest words and demanding that HN removes the offending thread is good enough.

What are we supposed to do, burn his books? The man is dead.

Viewing someone's actions out of historical context is not reasonable.

This stuff was happening in the 50s and 60s, and while it does seem overboard, should not be viewed through current cultural norms.

Was it wrong then?

Seems like, in this context, in the context of the time, it was consider crass and rude?

So not good, I guess I agree.

Separate the art from the artist.

This reminds me of the Mythic Quest Season 2 episode 6 called "Backstory!"

Done. The artist is dead.

“I kiss each young woman who wants an autograph and have found, to my delight, that they tend to cooperate enthusiastically in that particular activity.”

what an absolute chad. good for him.

David Foster Wallace also loved to do book tours just for dat "audience p*ssy" but you know, it's no way to live life getting everything you want as soon as it's presented to you.

In think both of these legends / geniuses deserved all of the pussy that has presented itself in front of them. Pussy doesn’t present itself without reason, which I think we can all agree on. Takes a lot of hard work and talent to get pussy through writing. Presentation of the aforementioned pussy and subsequent utilization of said pussy is just a nice bonus. Think RSU, only much more fun.

I reckon the real reason people (specifically men) are angry at folks like Asimov is that they're jealous.

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