Although it strikes me as unnecessary, or even slightly vain.
In the example given (and I can't remember the original author to check, so it may be spurious, but let's for the sake of argument assume it's not) it was quite clear that the suicides were a direct result. Whether those people would have committed suicide anyway and the book just speeded things up is impossible to say of course.
the skill of a good author lies in being able to craft words in a way which speak to multiple people an effective way". To my mind that's more the skill of the commercial author -- broad appeal.
I didn't mean that goodness is directly proportional to breadth of appeal and I definitely should have said part of the skill. "Multiple" here just means "more than one", not "as many as possible", some very talented authors have very limited audiences. But I think there's some correlation: this is why we speak of the classics "speaking out across the centuries", because they capture something (relatively) universal, and very bad writing will probably not appeal to many people. I don't think it's too far off to say that, all things being equal, most (but definitely not all) authors aim to reach as many as people as possible without diluting their message (which may not be very many). It is to those sorts of authors that argument is slanted.
Hmm. With your Lovecraft example: the fact that (arguably) bad people doing bad things has resulted in worthwhile writing doesn't stop them being bad things (or people). One can admire the great works inspired by death and war and still be a pacifist, or admire the pyramids and still be against slavery.
To give an example from my own writing: writing ACOS (my comic) I've at times noticed some fairly dodgy racist and sexist subtexts. In some cases they can be removed without affecting the storyline, but others are either inherent to the whole story or I can't think of any way to change them that wouldn't damage the quality. I didn't give up on the story(*) but I had a serious think about what I was going to do, and if anyone calls me out on it (unlikely, given the paucity of readers :)) will have to admit fault. I will note that thinking about this stuff has, in my opinion, improved the story overall.
(*)Well, ok, so I have written any in months, but that's because I'm easily distracted :)
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In the example given (and I can't remember the original author to check, so it may be spurious, but let's for the sake of argument assume it's not) it was quite clear that the suicides were a direct result. Whether those people would have committed suicide anyway and the book just speeded things up is impossible to say of course.
the skill of a good author lies in being able to craft words in a way which speak to multiple people an effective way". To my mind that's more the skill of the commercial author -- broad appeal.
I didn't mean that goodness is directly proportional to breadth of appeal and I definitely should have said part of the skill. "Multiple" here just means "more than one", not "as many as possible", some very talented authors have very limited audiences. But I think there's some correlation: this is why we speak of the classics "speaking out across the centuries", because they capture something (relatively) universal, and very bad writing will probably not appeal to many people. I don't think it's too far off to say that, all things being equal, most (but definitely not all) authors aim to reach as many as people as possible without diluting their message (which may not be very many). It is to those sorts of authors that argument is slanted.
Hmm. With your Lovecraft example: the fact that (arguably) bad people doing bad things has resulted in worthwhile writing doesn't stop them being bad things (or people). One can admire the great works inspired by death and war and still be a pacifist, or admire the pyramids and still be against slavery.
To give an example from my own writing: writing ACOS (my comic) I've at times noticed some fairly dodgy racist and sexist subtexts. In some cases they can be removed without affecting the storyline, but others are either inherent to the whole story or I can't think of any way to change them that wouldn't damage the quality. I didn't give up on the story(*) but I had a serious think about what I was going to do, and if anyone calls me out on it (unlikely, given the paucity of readers :)) will have to admit fault. I will note that thinking about this stuff has, in my opinion, improved the story overall.
(*)Well, ok, so I have written any in months, but that's because I'm easily distracted :)