JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman and "the death of the author"

[MargotBamborough]

Firstly, this thread is not quite about "the death of the author" as Roland Barthes meant it. It is more about the idea that a work of literature can be separated from its author and enjoyed on its own merits even if you no longer wish to endorse the author due to their political views.

Secondly, hello JKR if you are lurking on Mumsnet. I hope you are having a lovely day.

I am in a baby bumpers group for mothers of children born in the same month as my son. The group originated on Reddit, so it is very US-centric, and has given me a lot of insight into women like me, living in a political environment completely unlike the one I am used to.

In this group, dissenting political views simply are not tolerated. It isn't explicitly said, but members of the group feel perfectly at ease expressing certain political views, such as that trans women are women, trans kids should be allowed to use spaces and compete in sports according to their gender identity, and that the conservative attacks on women's right to an abortion are appalling. I agree with some of these views, but not others. But what is noticeable is that there seems to be only one acceptable set of views, and that if members of the group do hold opposing views, they do not feel comfortable expressing them. I like being in the group so I hold my tongue when others are expressing political views I disagree with, notably anything trans related.

There's a subset of the group who are huge, huge Harry Potter fans. They are all up to their necks in merchandise, they dress their kids up in Harry Potter themed costumes for photoshoots, they're all just way, way more into Harry Potter than anyone I have ever met in the UK, and yet by common consensus they do not discuss JK Rowling because they're all so disappointed in her.

When I asked the group whether any of them had read the Cormoran Strike series it felt a little awkward, and then one of them mentioned JK Rowling being controversial. So I kind of pleaded ignorance and said I didn't think JK Rowling was as controversial a figure in the UK as she is in the US. I was told that the entire group agreed that she has some "pretty bad takes" and that they don't like to talk about her. But the person who told me that also indicated that she personally enjoys the Cormoran Strike books, and I started discussing those with her in a separate chat. She didn't know there was a new book out and I'm hoping we'll be able to talk about it once she has read it. Ironically, I think that even though she was the one who shut down the discussion about JK Rowling in the main group, she's probably the one who is most receptive to alternative points of view. In our own chat she agreed that Troubled Blood is not a transphobic book, she didn't get what all the fuss was about, and it was probably her favourite in the series so far.

On the one hand, I find it absolutely incredible that people can still be obsessed with Harry Potter to the point that, in their 30s, their love for Harry Potter still forms a part of their own personal identity, and simultaneously hate JK Rowling and want to distance her as much as possible from her own creation. There are so many other books in the world. Why not move on from Harry Potter altogether?

On the other hand, I am personally experiencing a similar conflict when it comes to other authors and artists whose work I enjoy, but whose views on women's rights I find disappointing.

The two that immediately spring to mind for me are Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman.

There's no way that Margaret Atwood doesn't know what a woman is. She wrote the Handmaid's Tale, for crying out loud. A dystopian novel focused around the exploitation of women for their reproductive labour. She knows. There's no way she doesn't know. And she actually, a while ago, made some mild comments about not being allowed to say "woman" anymore, which were immediately seized upon by trans activists. She saw the mob approaching with their pitchforks and immediately recanted.

To a certain extent, I get it. She's an old woman. She doesn't want to have this fight. She has a very lucrative contract with Hulu, she's enjoying far more fame and fortune in her old age than most feminist writers can aspire to, and she probably won't live long enough to find out whether "trans women are women" really was the right side of history or not. But it's still disappointing.

Then there's Philip Pullman. Ugh. What an arsehole.

He wrote one series condemning organised religion, magical thinking and macabre experiments performed on pubescent children, and another series focused around a gender non-conforming woman living in an era when the odds were stacked against women even more than they are now. How can the man who created Sally Lockhart believe that trans women are women? If Sally Lockhart were a real person she would be a card carrying TERF, there is no doubt about it.

But Philip? No, he asks these leading questions on Twitter, the faux innocent, "Explain the gender critical position to me." He lets thousands of women patiently describe their experiences and outline their concerns to me. And then hours later he makes some sanctimonious jibe about how he "can't abide bigotry".

So whilst, on the one hand, I don't get how "liberal feminist" Potterheads can continue to be obsessed with Harry Potter whilst condemning JK Rowling, and on the other hand I would like to continue to enjoy the Sally Lockhart series whilst trying to forget that that odious wanker Philip Pullman ever had anything to do with them.

Can anyone else relate?

I feel you regarding Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale was on my curriculum in uni (in the 1990s) and I've been a fan ever since. I met her when she signed Oryx and Crake for me at the Hay Festival one year.

I understand her not wishing to "tarnish her legacy" the way JKR has. I imagine her sales and wealth, while impressive and well-deserved, are a fraction of JKRs. However, if one of the world's most respected feminists and the writer of The Handmaid's Tale had said TWANW, I think it would have been a big intervention.

I'm at a point where if I met a favourite artist, or indeed anyone I respected, I now wouldn't ask them their views on gender, or even awful stuff like recent news in Israel.

I don't want to know if they're a sellout, compromised, simpleminded, misogynist, anti Semitic.

Just a year ago, no problem. Today? Won't go there.

Mainly because there's even odds they would be TWAW and/or be able to obfuscate on Hamas. But also because even if they were strongly GC, they'd never be able to tell me.

I think that's what I find most admirable about JKR actually.

The fact that she thinks women's rights are important enough to "trash her own legacy" for. She knew this would happen and she did it anyway.

In the witch trials podcast she says something like, "Someone had to speak up and it had to be me because other women have mortgages to pay and can't afford to wreck their careers."

Not that it has wrecked her career, of course.

I find it absolutely fascinating that "progressives" in the US seem to be split between those who want Harry Potter to be withdrawn from sale because she's so "problematic" and are highly critical of those who continue to enjoy her work, and others who are like, "Yes I knowwwww she's so bad, but I love Harry Potter so much and I feel so conflicted and I bought Hogwarts Legacy which is amazing by the way but I also made a donation to a trans charity to make up for it."

Like carbon offsetting.

In the UK there are people on the left who think JK Rowling is transphobic, of course, but there doesn't seem to be this war raging over whether it's OK to continue to enjoy Harry Potter or not. Most people see Harry Potter for what it is: a bestselling series of books for children. Not something to have an existential crisis over.

I agree with JKR and so find people who won’t touch her books misguided.

At the same time I am becoming more likely to boycott other authors because of their trans views or misogyny.

I fully see the double standard I am employing. I’m not sure I know how to square this circle, when I believe I’m the one on the right side of history. Maybe the difference is I know I’m doing it.

Your thread does throw up some interesting perspectives.

I'd say it's here too. Our school library no longer has Harry Potter events, they used to be popular (although I assume they still have the books). DD loves Harry Potter, but even though she is moderately GC, there's no way she could take a HP accessory into school as it would cause controversy. There is no separating out the author from the work it seems.

Interesting.

To be honest I didn't know that Harry Potter events were a big thing in schools these days.

Is it definitely to do with the trans stuff or could it also be linked to the fact that she hasn't really published anything for children in years?

I still enjoy Harry Potter in my 30s but given that the last book in the series was published 16 years ago I think schools should probably be branching out a little more anyway. If you're holding specific Harry Potter themed events more than ten years after the publication of the last book and not doing the same for other authors, perhaps we need to have a broader conversation about why we aren't promoting other books for children.

But I guess it really is a phenomenon. Before Harry Potter I guess the closest thing would have been Roald Dahl, but there was never this level of Roald Dahl mania. And of course, Roald Dahl is widely considered to have been a pretty horrible person but that didn't affect the popularity of his books.

Interesting feature on the Telegraph website in which Rose Tremain suggests that authors are becoming 'boxed in' by growing pressure to write novels which solely reflect their own lived experience, and don't take a single step into territory they can't claim to have a personal stake in. I think this is possibly more of an authorial death - although for how long this pressure (largely internal, from certain factions within the publishing industry itself) will last is unknowable.

Preposterous. Good luck with Science Fiction.

Pretty much like actors who are criticised for um ... acting. You can't play a trans character unless you are trans etc and past work is raked over and criticised in light of the new religion.

I know, it's mad. And so selective. No one ever had a go at Ruth Rendell for not being a murderer. as far as I know

I'm glad you said this.

This is a massive worry as far as I am concerned.

JKR gets monstered by social justice warriors who criticise her somewhat clunky 1990s attempts at representing different ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations in the Harry Potter world as being tokenism. You should see some of the shit fits that have been retrospectively thrown about the fact that 20 years ago she invented a character with Chinese heritage and called her "Cho Chang". Long threads on Twitter with some people saying, "Cho Chang, for fuck's sake, that's just a bigoted white Karen's idea of what a token Chinese person might be called", and other people replying, "Actually I am Chinese and my name is Cho Chang."

And at the same time, if I wanted to write a novel from the point of view of a black protagonist, I'm sure that would be utterly unacceptable and in the unlikely event that it were ever published and attracted any media attention I would be vilified for trying to speak for black people and told to let black people tell their own stories.

You just can't win. Either you write boring stories about people like you and don't touch on anything remotely controversial, or you risk becoming the subject of a Twitter storm and people demanding your immediate cancellation.

And don't even get me started on the concept of "sensitivity readers" in the publishing industry, who are employed to go through unpublished texts with a fine toothcomb and flag up anything that might be considered offensive to anyone now or in the future.

Clearly this is going to have a hugely chilling effect on the publishing industry because authors will be too afraid to write anything. Why would you pour your heart and soul into writing a novel and risk becoming the subject of these people's ire?

I'm sure we will look back on this era as being a time when nothing interesting or thought provoking was created because everyone was too afraid. It'll be the dark ages of literature.

There had been a wee campaign from a small group of kids and the librarian is very accommodating of trans views.
Libraries will promote older literature, funding will dictate that they don't always have the latest books and obviously kids can't often afford things that are just published. HP was instrumental in encouraging lots of children to read and can be a gateway to lots of other books (which they also promote plenty of), I'd say it is as popular as ever.

He wrote one series condemning organised religion, magical thinking and macabre experiments performed on pubescent children, and another series focused around a gender non-conforming woman living in an era when the odds were stacked against women even more than they are now. How can the man who created Sally Lockhart believe that trans women are women? If Sally Lockhart were a real person she would be a card carrying TERF, there is no doubt about it.

I think this is my favourite paragraph of any I've read on Mumsnet, ever. Please send it to him somehow!

So most children like it as much as they ever did, but these events are no longer allowed to happen because a small group of dictators demand it, and this is why we can't have nice things?

Mostly, people want to remain in their groups and not rock the boat so won't admit to having a different opinion.

Then there is fear, which for many women who dare to speak out about gender ideology, seems perfectly understandable. Loss of employment, rape and death threats, police coming to 'check your thinking' etc.

Atwood has witnessed the vitriol towards JKR and pandered to the mob.

Pullman is just your run of the mill misogynist who now gets to express his true feelings about women to applause from other like minded 'folk'

Some people won't dare actually think about what's going on behind the ideology because they would have to confront their own cognitive dissonance, which is too uncomfortable.

With the adult Harry Potter obsessives, I think a lot of them built their escapist worlds around the fantasy in their youth and are upset that it now feels tainted to them. They have to condemn Jo publicly in order to get 'permission' to carry on with their obsession.

Yup. The whole ideology in a nutshell.

'Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.'

Ian McEwan

And it's becoming increasingly verboten to do so.

I once saw Philip Pullman do an “In Conversation” event with Rowan Williams when the latter was Archbishop of Canterbury.

Pullman was simply oozing smugness & had he not been so exceptionally unpleasant I’d have bad for someone who’d effectively turned up with an ammoless peashooter to an intellectual gunfight. I don’t mean that in terms of their respective academic qualifications; it was really painfully evident Pullman skates along as a pseudo intellectual whereas Williams is, as it were, The Real Deal. Which, of, course, served only to increasingly rattle Pullman. Pullman had also, I think, been counting on the audience being on “his side” due to the nature of the event. Foolish, arrogant, & (as mentioned upthread) deeply unpleasant man 🙄

Pullman loftily quoted Simone de Beauvoir at me (you know, the one all the TRA twatbadgers trot out about not being born, but becoming a woman).

I pointed out that the literal next sentence made it very clear the true meaning was the exact opposite, so he'd clearly only read the meme.

He ignored me.

Haven't read a word of his since. Faux-intellectual wankpuffin.

Philip Pullman makes Richard Dawkins look like an intellectual heavyweight, so I can only imagine how out of his depth he would be against Rowan Williams.

People who decide what their beliefs are going to be and then construct their arguments to reach that preordained conclusion never come off well in a debate against people who have really educated themselves, read widely around their subject and are constantly questioning their beliefs.

I wouldn't stop listening to Wagner because he was an anti-Semite, or reading other books whose authors had views I don't agree with, or looking at paintings by Caravaggio because he was a philanderer and a murderer. We are all full of contradictions and views that change with society over the years. An artist's creation should be appreciated apart from the character of the artist. I hate this puritanical witch-hunt by the self-righteous.
And I am 70 and still obsessed with Lord of the Rings after 60 years (though I don't dress as an elf 😁).

Faux-intellectual wankpuffin...THIS is why I come to Mumsnet.

I don't think its a new problem, women have had to get over an awful lot of disappointing favourite authors. We've managed to do that without cancelling many of them. Possibly because we never had that much power?

👌

Unlike, say, Anne Perry?