I saw when the Lamb opened up the eighth seal, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, a voice in the midst of the four beasts around the throne saying, Come and see.  (And I said unto the living creature, Wait, weren't there only seven seals on that thing?  And I heard one of the four-and-twenty elders speak unto his fellow, saying, Oh snap, the planet's in for it now.)



And I saw, and behold!  a yellowish-white horse: and he that sat upon it robed in white, and unto him was given a towering icicle.  He rode forth destroying, and to destroy.  And power was given unto him over the earth for half of the year, to imprison, to obstruct, and to bury.  And a great wailing went up, as of a thousand aged women who do not not possess milk to sustain them for many days.  And the name of he that sitteth upon the yellowish-white horse is Snow, and Winter followeth after him.

(Or at least, that's what you'd think Revelations 6 read if you listen to the news.  Heh.)

"Go Cowboys!"
"Um, Chris... the Cowboys aren't playing."
"Oh.  Who's playing again?"
"The Saints and the Colts."
"Oh.  Go Colts!"

*Carrie Underwood sings*  "Flat.  Flat again.  Oh man, is she off."
"I don't think she can hear herself--there's probably no monitor for her."

"Oh good, you made it!  We saved you the tails from the shrimp!"

"If they're the Colts, why do they have 'U's on their helmets?"
"Those are horseshoes, Mom."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"What do the Saints have on their helmets?  A big S?"
"No, a fleur-de-lis."
"Why?"
"My guess is because they're from N'Orleans, the whole French thing."

"Those 'U's on their helmets look like puppy dog ears."
"They're not 'U's, they're horseshoes."

"Man, the Who sounds awful."
"It's a bad sign when a classic band is getting upstaged by their own light show."
"Who's that on the drums?"
"Maybe it's Townsend's grandson."
"Stef, could you play better than him?"
*watches for a moment*  "Yeah, I could."
"When this is over, could we put on some classic Who?  I need to wash the taste from my mouth."

"Why do they always have older musicians at halftime?"
"Probably because the last two decades have put out almost nothing that is universally adored or memorable.  Can you imagine when Britney Spears will be on the Oldies Station?"
"It'll never happen."

"Man, Payton looks crushed."
"They can still pull this off."
"They'd have to make three perfect plays in the next two minutes to do so, but I guess it's still possible."
*watching in silence*
"No.  No it's not."

This question is based on two encounters in the last week.

The first, in a fellow reviewer of the Twilight series who happens to be gay, and who was in the middle of reading Breaking Dawn, and took umbrage at the fact that Meyer includes a quote by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game, Mormon, and apparently perceived by the LGBT community to be a homophobe).  The reviewer's comment box was filled by people who said how they loved Ender's Game or Speaker For The Dead, but that when they found out about his views on homosexuality, it "ruined" the books for them.

The second was a reminder of the viewpoint of a fellow Xangan (who shall remain nameless lest her comment box's deluge be increased sevenfold), who holds a longstanding dislike for the writings of C.S. Lewis.  And while there is much in Lewis's fiction that is understandably not to everyone's tastes, a large portion of her dislike (so I've been told) stems from Lewis's treatment of female characters and his views on the role of women.

I guess the question I'm driving at is this:

How much does a single-issue disagreement with an author impact your reception of that author's books?

Extreme hypothetical situation: Let's say you go to the library one day and take out Book X.  You read Book X and love it.  Then you find out that the author of Book X is something despicable: let's say a blatant racist, KKK member, white-power bigot.  But the book contained nothing of that, and had you not found out about it through other sources, you never would have guessed the author's bigotry from Book X.

Would you feel right about continuing to enjoy Book X?  Would you:
--Burn the book or throw it away so you don't support the author by spreading his works
--Give the book away
--Keep the book but vow never to pay money for one of his books again, so you don't support him
--Keep the book as a guilty pleasure
--Keep the book and display it proudly, because the book is a seperate entity from the author


Now granted, this is an extreme hypothetical--an author's views often trickle down into their writing, even unrelated writing.  Nevertheless, I'm interested in your responses.

My own response, almost by the necessity of my profession, is the last response.  I work with Literature, particularly Literature written before the current era.  This means much of what I read--and enjoy for its quality of work--is racist (Heart of Darkness, the writings of Robert E. Howard), racist in terminology but not in spirit (Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird), misogynist (The Taming of the Shrew), and other things that are offensive to our modern era and my current host culture.  (Heck, I use a Hitler speech as an example in my Public Speaking class, because the man was a gifted and charismatic orator even if everything he was saying was inflammatory crap.)  To a large extent, I am able to appreciate a work despite major disagreements with its tenants because I am aware of my own chronocentrism, the biases and subjective viewpoints derived from the culture and century I was raised in.  I can't expect a sixteenth-century writer to write like a twenty-first century writer.

But it goes beyond that, too.  I read modern literature, and much of it would offend me if I let it.  I am a Christian, which means I disagree with some major point of almost all literature written in the last century (except sometimes Flannery O'Connor, Tolkien, and Lewis).  I'm used to disagreeing with authors on major paradigm points, yet continuing to enjoy their work.

What do you think?