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 do struggle with authors/artists/musicians whose actions I've found abhorrent. Eric Gill, say, or Charles Bukowski.

If art is more than just light entertainment then we are looking to the makers for some insight into the human condition. And if they are morally bankrupt to the extent they are violent or abusive, then I find that makes it hard for me to consider their views as being on sound foundations.

So how do we deal with an apparent disconnect between the moral messages we see in the art and the moral values espoused by the artist?

Yeah, it's tricky. It's unpleasant to have to grow up and accept that those in positions of authority are often no more qualified than we are to make moral judgements or pronouncements. Perhaps one reason I find 'literary' fiction very hard to read these days.

I used to read Dickens as a kid, and I used to believe he must be a really good man living in terrible times 🙄.

There is a FB group Harry Potter Fans Who Love JK Rowling . Not sure if it was started by heretics driven from another page. Seems to be a fair few Americans on there.

Pullman despises Lewis and Tolkien because religious motifs might be discerned in their books. They are very bad men who invent nonsensical fantasy worlds which might lead children astray. Whereas Pullman...

Does Atwood still think of trans as a crack in the patriarchy I wonder? Or has she just lost the plot.

I'm a huge fan of the Potter books (and everything else Jo's written) and it is still a world I return to often. I can see how what JKR is accused of seems ideologically opposed to the strong anti-prejudice themes of the HP series.

What gets me is why you would stop at a superficial understanding of what she's accused of if you were really a big fan of the books. Wouldn't you look closer into it? (say by reading what she actually wrote 🤔) Even if you disagreed with her and thought she was mistaken, wouldn't you see it as a misunderstanding rather than evil personified?

My second favourite series is His Dark Materials. 😂😬 I love those worlds and characters too. I find it hard to understand why Pullman can't see the direct parallels between what happened at Bolvanger in his own work with the suppression of puberty and medical transition of young people in our world. I don't think he understands and doesn't seem to want to. Maybe stories of detransitioners will reach him and the penny will drop.

To be honest, though I like his storytelling (except for the convenient and arbitrary just one window thing, really Pullman?) I'd say there's a long standing professional jealousy or dismissiveness from him about other authors and JKR in particular. I went to a reading/q&a/book signing by him once and I can't remember what it was he'd said but it pissed me off as a fan of JKR's books as well as his. Just a sneery dismissiveness. I figured he felt superior about being more literary. It's a shame as I say as I appreciate both.

I'm sure part of his blindness on the GC stuff is that he likes feeling superior to her so doesn't question the criticism lobbed at her the way ought - if nothing else as a writer, he ought to be concerned about the free speech angle and imagination over the identity stuff and sensitivity readers etc.

A useful thing he has said in the past though is that writing is a dictatorship up to the point of being published but reading is a democracy. He gets to write the story and we get to interpret its meaning. Just because he didn't intend the parallel to be there, just because he hasn't seen it yet, doesn't mean it isn't there.

I haven't read the Sally Lockhart books in a long while but I think you are right, it does boggle the mind how people can hold such contradictory views.

I'm not letting his arrogance or ignorance stop me from enjoying Lyra's world. I think writers can sometimes tap into deep truths about the human experience that are meaningful to readers but that doesn't make them infallible or enlightened at all times even on the same subjects.

I won't comment on Atwood because I still haven't read AHMT 😳

Phillip Pullman lives near me (I don’t care about outing). It would be fair to say that he is not popular in the village: arrogant, condescending and obstructive are some words which have been used to describe him to me by people ( not just women) who live there.

I think a lot of men like this are basically afraid of women, and afraid of being found to be inferior in some way.

I've worked somewhere that is something of a pilgrimage for Harry Potter fans. Pretty much all of them are adults. The kids have simply moved on to other things. Nothing to do with Rowling's views - they're simply growing up with other stories.

To be fair, trying to put myself in the shoes of a liberal feminist in the US, I imagine how this is how a lot of people feel about JK Rowling.

It's far from "safe" to say you don't agree with all the gender identity stuff in the UK, particularly if you work in certain sectors. Maya Forstater and James Esses can attest to that. But I think it's fair to say that most people with no interest in trans issues would broadly agree with a lot of the things JKR has said, for example about referring to women as "menstruators", and I think even people on the opposing side of the debate would acknowledge that some of the loudest voices in favour of single sex spaces are those of left wing feminists.

In the US there don't really seem to be any feminists taking the gender critical position. The only people publicly saying that trans women shouldn't be using women's spaces are people who aren't exactly known for being progressive or kind.

So if you grew up loving Harry Potter and believing that JK Rowling wrote these amazing, very moral books about a boy who was an outsider and the triumph of good over evil, and touching on topics such as equal rights movements for minority groups, racism, feminism and all the rest of it, I can see why you might struggle with the fact that the only people in your culture who say the things JK Rowling is saying are far right Christians who do actually hate trans people.

This is good to know, actually.

No offence to Harry Potter at all, I'm looking forward to introducing my own children to that world when they are old enough for the books.

But it really would be a sad indictment of the state of children's literature if there weren't other, more recent books being published and encouraging children to love literature.

I'm sure JKR would agree.

There's a few authors I love (Sheri Tepper, Diane Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett), who are now dead. As sad as I am that I'm unlikely to read new work by them, at least I don't have to worry they're going to pop up spouting 'twaw'.

Great post.

I agree with so much of what you have said here.

Why indeed would you not look closer at what JKR has actually said?

I actually strongly suspect that the woman I am discussing the Cormoran Strike series with knows that JKR isn't actually an evil bigot but she feels completely unable to say that amongst her peers. I don't want to push her too hard and scare her off but I have hinted that the witch trials podcast is an interesting listen. But realistically, even if she is completely aware of all this stuff in private, I doubt she'll ever feel able to say so.

I also think it's very likely that Philip Pullman has nursed a very long-term grudge against JKR for being so much more commercially successful than him and this is his way of getting one over on her.

Which is ridiculous!

He's Philip Pullman! OK he didn't write Harry Potter and he'll never be as rich as JK Rowling, but he's been hugely successful in his own right and he didn't have anything to prove. But now I've lost all respect for him.

Just would like to say that I will be running Harry Potter book night in my school library next February, because it's sheer joy. Didn't run it last year because my then colleague thought it might upset some students. (Not something I could manage alone) If students want to talk to me then I'm very willing to have the conversation. But I will be questioning their terror of an event that will happen after the school day - no one needs to even be in the building.

I'm always surprised that Val McDermid hasn't been 'cancelled' for the actual real transphobia in her book 'The Mermaids Singing '. I remember being a bit shocked when I first read it.

JRK (my total heroine) has never written or said anything even vaguely like that - her trans character in the Silkworm is very sympathetically portrayed.

Regarding Margaret Atwood, I understand people are disappointed and that it would have been a great help if she'd come out publicly as gender critical.

However, she is most famous for what could be considered the most gender critical work of fiction so far, and she did that a long time ago. The Handmaid's Tale describes so succinctly the logical endpoint of exploiting women's biology that I think it takes its rightful place alongside 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, for example, as a warning that will stand for years to come. The fact that it's a big hit on TV now and so many people can't do 2+2 when they enjoy the series, but look at the real world and see how women are being treated is an irony that is probably not lost on Atwood.

I suppose what I'm saying is, she's done enough, and I personally can't be too disappointed in her at this stage in her life. She might feel like a Cassandra and be ranting and raving behind the scenes, who knows? But as it is her work stands and no TRAs are trying to burn her books and put young people off reading her. If she did a JKR, she could be pulled down and dismissed as a 'dinosaur', as ageism goes so nicely hand in hand with misogyny, it seems.

Don't forget how often we quote her on here. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." Of course she knows what a woman is.

I think it's an erosion in the ability to understand agreeing with someone/group on x doesn't mean you agree with everything else they do.

I suppose you can argue boycotting living people with political views which are distasteful you can hope to influence their earning capacity and perhaps influence them to rethink - or at least tell yourself you are not offering tacit approval for their views but it's a greyish moral area for me.

I've have been taken aback with some american fashion historians who get people had different daily requirements in the past yet still judge historical figure with modern standards and if they don't all pass then try and reject everything they did and stood for - they know the past is different and they do things different there- but can't apply it to politics.

I think authors also have to content with fashion in the publishing industry as well as wider public tastes which may not be the same. I read a variety of book types including romance ones and for years after 50 shades of grey ( which I didn't bother to read) nearly every contemporary romance book suddenly had S&M type stuff shoved in - last few years YA, urban fantasy and some US sci-fi has had gender identity stuff in it.

I live in the US in a very liberal area. I consider myself a liberal and a feminist. Your second paragraph, OP, describes exactly the atmosphere when it comes to trans issues. There is simply no way I could talk out loud about my gender critical views without there being a huge fallout. My daughters (they are TWAW) know my views and that is it. It would be unthinkable to be gender critical in most colleges/universities in this area. People would simply assume you were a Trump supporter and anti-gay and probably racist too. My daughter recently said that it was wrong to say "pregnant people" when discussing abortion (anyone who is media trained now says this or "pregnant folks" - I regularly hear discussions on abortion bans on NPR where the word woman or mother is never used) - and then said "but I couldn't say that outside of our house".

Meanwhile the radical right have taken over this issue because the democrats have handed it to them on a plate with a sprig of parsley. Trump said it out loud - something like "hey the trans issue, that came out of nowhere right" So now you get lumped in with the fuckers who gave us the Dobbs decision if you raise any concern.

Every now and then there is a nuanced article in the NYT or the Atlantic. That's it though. The comments sections on any trans-related article in NYT or Washington Post or Boston Globe are interesting - way more pushback on sports/medicalization of kids/rapists in women's prisons there. The phrase "gender affirming care" is bandied about as if it was nothing more than allowing kids to wear a pink band aid.

Well, America was forged out of religion, and it now has a new one that appeals to all the fluffy minded liberals out there. All it requires are the mantras Be Yourself and Be Kind. It eshews any criticism it's judging because it views the judging all from the other side (us, the rationals, saying a man can't become a woman, and that teens should be medicalised). Borne out of a decades long path of therapizing and looking inside, and finding the authentic self that because it is the whole person, and we can't judge, remains untested and no critical analysis can be applied.
It's however the opposite of a true religion in that it makes no demands on the member. The member just accepts any gender ID the other person declares, and gently adjusts behaviour and linguistic patterns to match.
Issues with women's sport, spaces, prisons, are just details to be worked out at a later date.
However in America, traditional religion is on the rise, primarily Catholicism on likely it's fourth incarnation, and as Hispanics within two to three decades look to become the largest single group in the US, identarianism will be on the back foot. Added to the growth of Islam.
Indeed, the group that will shrink the fastest are the atheist/humanist liberals, they may be making the running re this cultural McCarthyism right now, but they're not producing any babies. Only Hispanics, Asians, blacks, and to a smaller extent, the white working class are.
Identarianism goes to die as it's biggest adherents, TWAW professional women in America don't go on to have families of their own.

You make some good points but I can't agree with that last sentence.

Every woman in my group says TWAW, and every single one of them has at least one child and usually more than one.

Well, certainly Hispanic and Asian family formation seems to point to white indigenous proportion of US population falling below 50% within a couple of decades.

Did I read somewhere that professional grade liberal white women in US were having children much later in life, often none at all, or one at most.

Indeed isn't this the point Miriam Cates, Louise Perry, Victoria Smith and Mary Harrington are making?

My only point is that there's a growing backlash in the US to left liberal ID politics, and it's religious women, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and some white, taking the lead.

Again, I can only speak for the group I know, but I was 35 when I had my son and most members of the group are younger than me, so they're not as old as you might think. The majority of them either already have multiple children or are planning more, a handful are "one and done".

Well, I've always thought it's going to be the next lot, Generation Alpha, who win this battle. If they en masse reject the mantras establishing, then TRA will recede.

Great thread @MargotBamborough.

I feel as if we're in a time when if you visualise a piece of art, we're encouraged to see an image of the artist alongside it. Book covers, especially for children, frequently have the author's photo on the outside back now. I think author contracts require far more personal promotion, exposure and information than they used to (i accept that authors have always been celebs to some extent but I do think it's more than it used to be).

So it's harder to separate the art from the artist. I love Josephine Tey books but her viewpoints are frankly bizarre - her confident assertion that men with pale blue eyes are probably murderers stays with me. However I've never read an interview she gave and i don't know what she looked like. Mostly I can ignore it for a good story and Sarah Waters doesn't get cancelled for namechecking her as an influence.

I'm subject to this too. I've no interest in 'cancelling' the children's author CV, but she lives in my city and I will never voluntarily pick up a book by her or give one as a gift because of her terrifying level of viciousness to Rachel Rooney and any GC opinion. My choice. Am I missing out? Maybe. But I just don't want her in my head.

My basic principle is I don't care too much about the person of the author, it's about the books (or paintings or music etc.)

That being said, I find it is often, though not always the case, that authors who I disagree with in a very basic way, have shitty novels. It's not people who are jerks, they can be great writers. I suppose it's mainly stupid people.

Pullman for me is interesting, because I agree, he is a real lightweight and his "argument" against C.S. Lewis in the Dark Materials series was lightweight too, he doesn't seem to have even understood Lewis in a basic way. As a result there is kind of a pretentious quality as the story goes on. But I enjoyed the books nonetheless, (I haven't read the last.) I found the writing lovely and the world-building compelling.

I don't think Atwood does understand the issues with gender ideology. I think like many Canadians, she sees it as a real medical issue, similar to DSDs.

The Rowling people are interesting. Part of what strikes me with the Potter Fans is that they are so over the top for people who are the age they are. Fandoms in general now I find like that, they are so hugely corporate, and almost seem like a kind of pseudo-religion, a means of connecting and finding meaning for people who don't have any other better way to do those things. I think that is part of what makes their attitude to Rowling seem so especially weird.

The more I truly love a book, the less I want to know about the author as inevitably they’ll be a living, breathing, flawed, ageing, human disappointment.