> Personally, I don't really care what sort of person the author is if
> his or her work pleases me. And I can't say I've ever felt the desire
> to meet authors I like. Indeed, what I like about them happens to sit
> on the desk in front of me--their works. Is anything more necessary?
>
> Paul M.
I wonder. Certainly that's how it ought to be. I think, though, that a lot of readers, especially in cases where the author is one that is particularly admired, identify with their preference to such a degree that it becomes an emotionally important issue to them whether or not they can truly 'like' the author as a person as well. It amounts to whether they can justify liking themselves for liking the work.
Neurotic as that sounds, it's not so hard to understand; to kick the question over to the other extreme for a moment, if a quintessentially evil person created a great work of art, and you were a wealthy art collector, would you buy it in the name of Art, knowing that by doing so you would enrich Evil? That's rather dramatic, of course, but one might consider one's approval an expenditure of a mildly similar sort.
It's easy to separate an author's personal makeup from his writing in instances where the appreciation of his talent is cool-headed appraisal of result apart from source, but what if that writing speaks to one's spirit so profoundly that it seems almost a second voice? Dramatic again, I know, but not so far-fetched if you love literature, and the implication is unavoidable: if your being is moved so fundamentally by this or that Siren, what does it say about yourself, to yourself?
Then again, *commoditas quaeris sua fert incommoda secum*, which, before you howl, my Brewer's tells me means 'if you will enjoy the fire, you must put up with the smoke.'
rbadac