| Author | Message | ||
     Emanuel Newbie Poster Username: Emanuel Post Number: 10 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
The author makes some good points in this essay. However, she forgets to mention the other side of the story-the demand side. Surely if there wasn’t a demand for these types of books (which some people can relate to and others use a mere escape), the books would surely die along with the careers of the authors who write them. Shouldn’t she address the audience’s demand as well? In a capitalistic society (such as ours), material wealth rules. It is evident in politics, entertainment, and especially marketing. ‘If you drive this car, you’ll get the job.’ ‘If you wear these sneakers, you’ll get the girl.’ If writing trashy novels is the means to money and fame, best believe people will go after it with gusto, regardless of moral issues. Speaking of ethics, just whose ethics are we referring to here? The author seems to assume that everyone subscribes to her seemingly Judeo/Christian ethics, when in fact a majority of folks are only giving lip service and faking it-listening to N.W.A. on the way to church, beating their kids one day, smiling in the preacher’s face the next. Truth is: it’s not an author’s job to raise society’s children or shelter them from certain people’s brand of ethics. It’s the parents’ job. The argument about having to know the life to write about it is completely bogus. The best fiction writers are the creative ones who would have you believe they know the life. It’s much more difficult than writing a true story, which makes it a skill. Although it does help to write about what you know, it is not a requirement. The ethical problems she mentions are not a race issue but a society issue. Name one moral problem blacks face that others don’t. The glorification of violence? See the Sopranos. Sex without marriage? How about Sex and the City? And as a book reviewer, I’ve seen poorly written work filled with grammatical and spelling errors from authors of all races. It’s not a black thing. It’s an ignorance thing. -Emanuel Carpenter www.geocities.com/emanuelcarpenter |