Charlie wrote:
"And to suggest that the writer using such characters must be
bigoted, well, kinda silly, don't you think??"
Well, yes and no.
I agree with you that characters of many different levels of
morality should be presented. I even agree that "bad" people
need not always be the bad guys. For instance, there is a
Southern Sheriff in one of the Hap and Leonards who is
clearly racist, but he is clearly a good person by his own
standards. Lansdale is very good at differentiating this
lawman from the other, corrupt ones in the town. The
viewpoint characters, including the first person narrator
clearly don't approve of the Sheriff's views, but I think
they are presented fairly.
So the simple use of bad characters does not imply things
about the author. However, the author's endorsement (or
non-endorsement) does. If a writer always depicts good and
evil in the same ways, without variation, always depicts
certain character traits as positive and others as negative,
then I think certain assumptions about the writer's values
can be inferred. Does anyone have any doubts as to Spillane,
the author's politics, for instance? Or Vachss, the author's
views on child molesters? Whether this is a problem or not is
another matter.
Mark
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