Are writers under any obligation to conform to any moral norms in their writing - beyond the obvious requirements of the law eg. libel, obscenity etc ?

Should they aim to work good in the world through their writing?

Or is simply bearing witness to this poisonous wreck of a world sufficient?

And does anyone else even give a monkey's about it?

Please advise.

Or is everyone too busy planning to become the next JKR?

I suppose writers shouldn't plagiarise..then again, every writer does it in some way, we are just retelling a few basic stories after all.
I don't think I'd like writing which preached too much. I like it to feel somewhat honest, as if the writer is sharing what they've noticed about the world. Is that moral? Not sure.

what do you think sadowl?

I suppose writers shouldn't plagiarise..then again, every writer does it in some way, we are just retelling a few basic stories after all.
I don't think I'd like writing which preached too much. I like it to feel somewhat honest, as if the writer is sharing what they've noticed about the world. Is that moral? Not sure.

what do you think sadowl?

I don't like preachy writing, but I do like pithy comment.
I don't think there are many new stories, and I think that chasing novelty for its own sake often produces unsatisfactory results.
I agree with you about it feeling honest and the writer sharing what they've noticed about the world.

And I've also noticed that SheffieldForum is the displacement activity par excellence!

What do you think shh!

my life is a series of displacement activities! By yeah, SF is a big part of that. I need a computer which isn't connected to the internet for when I want to write. Its like a reflex, check SF, 5 minutes pass, then 5 hours! Oh well, new job soon , hopefully it'll make me spend my free time more wisely...

I think writers are/were often seen as quite decadent, rebellious or unconventional. Wilde, Rimbaud, Blake. Then again theres Ted Hughes, he was such a blighter yet I love his writing. I think you can separate the man and the work to an extent.

my life is a series of displacement activities! By yeah, SF is a big part of that. I need a computer which isn't connected to the internet for when I want to write. Its like a reflex, check SF, 5 minutes pass, then 5 hours! Oh well, new job soon , hopefully it'll make me spend my free time more wisely...

I think writers are/were often seen as quite decadent, rebellious or unconventional. Wilde, Rimbaud, Blake. Then again theres Ted Hughes, he was such a blighter yet I love his writing. I think you can separate the man and the work to an extent.

Lord Rochester and the Marquis de Sade may have disagreed with you on your last comment. They did tend to practice what they preached - at least to some extent.

They made a virtue out of sin...their naughtiness is what makes them so popular!

They made a virtue out of sin...their naughtiness is what makes them so popular!

Sadly they both spoiled the game by their death bed repentance. Particularly ironic for de Sade who had been banged up in the Bastille mainly because of his blasphemy .. the rest of his activities being pretty much de rigeur for a C18 aristo I should imagine.

Had there been no rules they couldn't have had so much fun breaking them. But are there any rules in writing today?

A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce to risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book... A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume-something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a 'mass medium.' No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.

But with that disregard comes the freedom that only books have. And if a storyteller is going to write novels instead of screenplays, that's a freedom you need to exploit. Otherwise, write a movie. That's where the big money's at. Write for television.

But, if you want the freedom to go anywhere, talk about anything, then write books.

Of course, Palahuik is wrong about books not being banned - I think one of JKRs books was banned for inciting witchcraft in a school in the states, and there certainly has been talk of it here as well. But it is a point that the medium gives you a freedom to push the boundaries that other forms do not - because it can be the work of one individual; because it is not constrained by moral, physical, or narrative limits; and because there is no certification (yet) to limit the audience of books.

But as for working good or bearing witness to evil - you could write the most well intentioned of books and end up inspiring a dictator, or bear witness to evil and convince someone to change the world for the better. That said, I think it is always easier to write misery than to write happiness.

The best writing for me always includes observations of the world that educate or make things clearer or just take you to another viewpoint. What often surprises me is even in "pulp" novels - the Horse Whisperer, or Stephen King - there are often insights that make it an enjoyable spiritual/intellectual read as well as an emotional one. The more obvious "intellectual" books sometimes leave me with the feeling of having had a message rammed down my throat (Houellebecq's Atomised was one for me), whereas something far more subtle and emotionally engaging can have more effect.

Just about everything I write in poem/song form has an obvious "message", but in my writing (what of it there is a the moment) I try and weave it in a bit more under the surface - but then I wouldn't want someone to read it and not get the message...

Had there been no rules they couldn't have had so much fun breaking them. But are there any rules in writing today?

there are...I don't know if they're moral rules though! More like legal ones.

An American librarian recently got into trouble for writing a memoir thinly disguised as fiction, describing all the bad (borderline illegal) activities of her patrons. Unfortunately this was published by a vanity press (a real publisher would have surely realised how dicey it was) local people recognised themselves, and now she's been sacked. I feel kind of sorry for her, if she'd just been a bit smarter she could have used her patron's antics as part of an original story and no-one would be any the wiser. Now she's ruined as a librarian and a writer.

Houellebecq had a message? Please tell me what it was! I even watched the film and I still didn't get it!

you could write the most well intentioned of books and end up inspiring a dictator, or bear witness to evil and convince someone to change the world for the better. T.

You're right- John Lennon's killer was 'inspired' by Catcher in the Rye. Um, how? :suspect: JD Salinger can't be held responsible. His book is still a good book. I don't think it really harmed his reputation - the controversy may have improved it a bit!

there are...I don't know if they're moral rules though! More like legal ones.

An American librarian recently got into trouble for writing a memoir thinly disguised as fiction, describing all the bad (borderline illegal) activities of her patrons. Unfortunately this was published by a vanity press (a real publisher would have surely realised how dicey it was) local people recognised themselves, and now she's been sacked. I feel kind of sorry for her, if she'd just been a bit smarter she could have used her patron's antics as part of an original story and no-one would be any the wiser. Now she's ruined as a librarian and a writer.

A cautionary tale indeed. However possibly a fitting end for her career if she had been reduced to vanity publishing. Far better the honest underachievement of non-publishing in such a case. Maybe she'd have been better suited to a career in blackmail - now if she'd sold the books to the patrons, secretly...:hihi:

It was Publish America, who pose as 'traditional publishers' to get $ from naive writers. She's not the first to be suckered in- but she's a librarian for godsakes, we're taught to research the truth of things! Yeah, blackmail would have been more lucrative.

I'll make a note not to use them in future. Didn't she break some kind of librarians code of conduct as well?

Houellebecq had a message? Please tell me what it was! I even watched the film and I still didn't get it!

Well ok, it wasn't a clear MESSAGE, but the book is like:

It was a gloomy day, Joe lit a cigarrette and thought "What is the point of existence, our lives are doomed by the limitations of our physical selves, our society is hampered to the extent that we are splitting apart from each other, in fact we may have always been distant... (continues for 94 pages). Joe stubbed out the cigarette and ordered a beer.

The message is not tied with the story in the same way that, for example, Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood do it - not to say Atomised was a bad book, but sometimes it was like reading a philosophy essay plonked down in the middle of a story about a man who had trouble relating to people.

I'll make a note not to use them in future. Didn't she break some kind of librarians code of conduct as well?

Yep, that's why she got fired. Actually, there are a couple of somewhat successful 'tell all' librarian memoirs but they were smart enough to disguise the places/people.

Well ok, it wasn't a clear MESSAGE, but the book is like:

The message is not tied with the story in the same way that, for example, Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood do it - not to say Atomised was a bad book, but sometimes it was like reading a philosophy essay plonked down in the middle of a story about a man who had trouble relating to people.

Maybe it read better in the original - my school level French wouldn't enable me to tell. But it felt very dreary beside McEwan and Atwood.

But, apparantly, Atomised was supposed to be about this:

Atomised is an effort to sound the depths of perversity itself. Perversion, as Houellebecq's narrator acknowledges, is humanity's bitter response to an intolerable condition of its own technological devising: the separation of need and desire. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has identified in the serial erotic torpor of the writings of the Marquis de Sade, a desperate effort to bring together these radically divided categories, to make of sexual desire the habitual essence of quotidian existence.

http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/books/atomised.html

If so IMO de Sade did a much more comprehensive job of sounding the depths of perversity. Unfortunately, somewhat like Houellebecq, he never quite managed to write a readable book!

I hope Houellebecq enjoyed doing the research because this reader experienced very little pleasure with the finished work!

Yep, that's why she got fired. Actually, there are a couple of somewhat successful 'tell all' librarian memoirs but they were smart enough to disguise the places/people.

Hmm, I'll never trust a librarian again.

Well ok, it wasn't a clear MESSAGE, but the book is like:

It was a gloomy day, Joe lit a cigarrette and thought "What is the point of existence, our lives are doomed by the limitations of our physical selves, our society is hampered to the extent that we are splitting apart from each other, in fact we may have always been distant... (continues for 94 pages). Joe stubbed out the cigarette and ordered a beer.

The message is not tied with the story in the same way that, for example, Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood do it - not to say Atomised was a bad book, but sometimes it was like reading a philosophy essay plonked down in the middle of a story about a man who had trouble relating to people.

Hello,

You mentioned Margaret Atwood. Living in Canada: I have tried, believe me, to read her books but 94 pages or several chapters describing things like a wart on someones face, doesn't do it for me.

Long ago,I relegated M. Atwood to a list of authors I call my "Benchmark Set" - when their writing begins to resonate and have meaning, I will know that I have gone mad.

Then a little while ago, I picked up a short piece Margaret had written on the death of her beloved mother some months before. It was free of all the usual things we find in her books and very moving. Now I don't know if I have gone over the edge or not.

Regards

As far as I know, the Publish America writer wasn't a librarian, but a library assistant. There's a long thread about the case over at Absolute Write, which makes compelling (if somewhat ugly) reading.

I'm sure that Publish America must have published a few good books in its time but I've never managed to find any.

Reading the article below, it would appear that she didn't exercise good judgement…

The Library Diaries by Ann Miketa (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=72228)

Hello,

You mentioned Margaret Atwood. Living in Canada: I have tried, believe me, to read her books but 94 pages or several chapters describing things like a wart on someones face, doesn't do it for me.

Long ago,I relegated M. Atwood to a list of authors I call my "Benchmark Set" - when their writing begins to resonate and have meaning, I will know that I have gone mad.

Then a little while ago, I picked up a short piece Margaret had written on the death of her beloved mother some months before. It was free of all the usual things we find in her books and very moving. Now I don't know if I have gone over the edge or not.

Regards

94 pages describing a wart? I must have missed that one, and been focussing on those novels of hers that are based on nothing but meaning (and politics, and history, and science - you know, the usual pointless stuff ;))

I think we must have been reading a different Atwood.

*puzzled*