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▲ bowsamic 5 days ago

If you think the point of your work is what you end up being famous for, then you have no moral ground to stand on

▲alangou 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

How should one decide what to read?

▲nkmskdmfodf 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Huh?

If you're going to write a book, for other people to read, you ultimately want people to understand and recognize your ideas/the point of your work. It has nothing to do with morality.

▲bowsamic 5 days ago | parent [-]

I'm talking of the poster, judging the Lolita author for being famous for Lolita. Thinking that judgement is through fame is a morally depraved, evil outlook

▲nkmskdmfodf 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Oh I see. I don't disagree with you point then, but the context here is 'immortal works' and that's definitely strongly correlated with the popularity of the work. 'Immortal work' ~= 'still popular long in the future'

▲alangou 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How should one judge a writer if not by the body of their work?

▲bowsamic 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You didn't judge the writer by their body of work. You judged the author by which works are famous.

▲michaelt 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If I write a cautionary tale about the seductive evils of fascism,

with an unreliable narrator who's a cog in the evil machine, and obviously deluded about it,

and deeply unpleasant detailed descriptions of the awful cruelty perpetuated by the nazi regime,

and some fascists really like my book, because detailed descriptions of awful nazi cruelty are their jam, and they really identify with my evil, unreliable, deluded narrator

and a lot of people haven't read my book, but they know the kind of person who like my book - fascists

should I be judged by the popular reception of my work?

▲watwut 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

With this chain of events, at minimum you should be judged as someone who failed and accidentally created a fascist book.

But also, it is a bit suspect chain of events. Because it is quite unlikely that your books describe Jews in much sympathetic human way. Fascists would not like that. You wrote a book about suffering fascist and per your book ideology, fascism is bad when the fascists themselves suffer. That is just critique of concrete fascist regime from the point of view of the fascist.

▲Yossarrian22 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes if your work encourages there to be more fascists