In mourning for tainted books

I spent about half an hour the other night editing some blog posts to extract references to an author who has recently fallen from grace. And by that I mean splat, ejected from the community, ‘you’re not welcome on my kindle anymore’…

But it hurts. Truly hurts. Because those posts were about my favourite books from last year. And, no matter how despicable this author has turned out to be, the books in question are really really good.

The whole situation is making me think about things…

such as how it’s possible for wonderful characters and love stories to be created by someone/people the opposite of wonderful.

such as whether the value of art transcends the merit of its creator.

such as whether we as readers now need to do our due diligence on authors to avoid this intense feeling of betrayal.

Once upon a time, before the digital age and social media, novels were simply novels and readers gave little thought to who actually penned them, other than to wait avidly for the next book by the same author.

Now, for better or worse, readers have unprecedented access to authors. We read their blogs, interact via social media. They become real people as opposed to disembodied names on book covers. We feel like we get to know them.

And we also get to find out when they turn out to be dicks.

The author I’ve eradicated from my three December/January posts appears to be considerably more than a mere dick. It turns out the pseudonym (let’s call the author SH) appears to represent a husband/wife team who have been hiding behind a completely fictitious construct.

This is more than simply using a pseudonym (which is common and perfectly acceptable). It’s more than misrepresenting themselves as a bisexual man in a genre (M/M romance) where ‘own stories’ are less common that we’d all like.

It’s a whole host of manipulative and abusive behaviour (and lies) that I’m not going to repeat. (Go here if you want to know the details.) It’s the very opposite of that social media catchphrase, ‘authentic’.

I’m still not sure the whole truth has come to light, and we’ll probably never know because SH has gone dark. But the furor has caused publishers to drop SH like a hot potato. (And this is a prolific author with representation and multiple publishers.)

Sadly, I’m finding this new reality really hard to reconcile with the old reality. (The one where SH was one of the ‘good ones’.)

Because I don’t want to believe the author of some of my favourite books could be capable of all the things he/they have been accused of. Despite overwhelming evidence and testimonies from people all over the interwebs, I keep wondering (hoping) whether it’s all a terrible mistake.

So I’m in mourning… For books that are tainted now, even though I can’t help but still love them. These are books I would normally read multiple times. Some I’ve already read more than once.

But now I feel as though I’m not allowed to love them anymore. This is where novels take on a life of their own for me… because I’m feeling for those characters as though they’re now being shunned for something they didn’t do. (Haven’t they already suffered enough?!)

I certainly don’t want to spend any more money with this author, or encourage others to do so, but if I re-read the books I already own in secret, does that make me a bad person?

This situation is entirely a product of the digital age. But, although a small part of me might wish I could have remained in ignorance, in reality we’re all much better off in a world where authors (everybody, really) can be held accountable to those who are buying their books.

Not that I think authors owe readers details of their personal lives, but they do need to be honest and have integrity.

On the whole, I do think art can be appreciated for itself, irrespective of who created it, and those books written by SH have not changed in essence.

But — and it is a big but — those books have been compromised now, and to openly acknowledge them feels like condoning the actions of their creator. So, as much as it doesn’t seem fair to the characters in those stories, they will probably now die a sad and lonely death.