“Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. ‘I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,’ said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. ‘He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless “philosophy” he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.’” In the NYT, Rachel Donadio looks at relationships undone by differing book tastes (and, along the way, quotes a college friend of mine, Christian Lorentzen.)
Funnily enough, my last serious relationship, lo, 18 months ago now, didn’t end because of book taste, but — like Laura Miller above — I always considered the Ayn Rand citation on her Friendster profile an ominous red flag (and, in the clear light of retrospect, I was absolutely correct in this regard.) In the relationship before that, things started out ok, and then, eight or nine months in, we daringly ventured to trade lists of recommended books. At first, all was well: She seemed to dig All the King’s Men, and I finally got around to reading Moby Dick (I liked it, but also found most of it the longest…Atlantic piece…ever…) But we got on shakier ground when I didn’t cotton at all to her favorite tome, Thomas Wolfe’s Look, Homeward Angel. (If you’ve never read it, here’s the short version: I, the protagonist, am more brilliant and tortured than absolutely everybody here in fake-Asheville, NC, and thus noone will ever understand me. After 500 pages of complaining about it, I will leave, and seek my fortune elsewhere.) Meanwhile, she was so embarrassed to be seen with Dan Simmons’ Hyperion — a book I don’t love, but thought might make a good intro to decent sci-fi yarns for someone with highbrow sensibilities, what with all the Chaucer and Keats nods therein — that she’d hide it from people on the train. Whether all this brought about or hastened the end, I know not…but it surely didn’t help. The point being, be wary, young lovers: The book collection can be a minefield, as the Donadio essay attests.
Well said. I actually got Hyperioned by an ex. In my case, though, I read it, couldn’t put it down even during classes, and ended up liking it a lot more than she (the recommender) did. It was all for naught, because while I still have Hyperion, she ended up with a sizable chunk of my cyberpunk collection. The fact that we seriously disagreed on the merits (or not, in my opinion) of Dickens really didn’t help things along.
I liked the Hyperion books fairly well until I ran across this borderline racist neocon screed by their author.
Then I had to go back question whether he was pushing that sort of crap in the books and I missed it, or what. I don’t think he was(and maybe he’s one of those people who was driven over the edge by 9/11), but I hate having to wonder at all. Usually you can separate the bad politics of the author from the art, especially with dead authors, but it gets harder when they’re still right in the thick of the ongoing conversation making asses of themselves.
Ugh. Ok, that’s a pretty embarrassing short story.
The short version for people who don’t click through. A time traveler ventures into the past to tell Dan Simmons this: “All infidels – Christians, Jews, secularists — have been executed, converted, or driven out. Israel is cinders. Eurabia and the New Khalifate is growing, absorbing what was left of the old, weak cultures there that once dreamt of a European Union. The Century War is not near over. Two of your three grandsons are now dead. Your remaining grandson still fights, as does one of your surviving granddaughters. Two of your three living granddaughters now live under sharia within the aegis of New Khalifate. They are women of the veil.’…’Enjoy these last days and months and years of your slumber, Grandfather,’ said the scarred old man. ‘Your wake-up call is coming soon.’”
Yeah, that’s no good. What is it about science fiction in particular that seems to draw out the crazies? Ender’s Game notwithstanding, Orson Scott Card is way over the ledge. And I remember being irritated by a few David Brin pieces too, although, if I’m remembering right, it’s because they were so virulently anti-Tolkien (who at least tempered his own Century War type-cataclysm with war-is-hell-for-everybody-type musings by Faramir et al.)