Tim Blair

Hmmm...no mention of Tom Wolfe or Mark Helprin, who can write rings around most of the people on this list. Wonder why nobody asked them?

Really, who buys literature based on the author's political affiliation? I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it's narrowing. (know thine enemy)

I do. Leftists tend to suck as writers.

What about Kurt Vonnegut?

Also intelligent: another detective novelist, this one named Robert Ferrigno. "Mark me on the Bush side of the ledger, a lonely side for this survey, I'm certain. Most novelists live in their imagination, which is a fine place to be until the bad guys come knock knock knocking. I don't agree with Bush on shoveling free meds to granny and grandpa, or his antipathy to fuel conservation along with opening up the arctic reserve, but this is small stuff. I'll be voting for Bush because his approach to stopping the people who want to kill my children is the right one, i.e., kill them first. Kerry will dance the Albright two-step with Kim Jong-il, consult with Sandy Berger's socks, and kowtow to the U.N. apparatchiks who have done such a fine job of protecting the Cambodians, Rwandans, and the Sudanese. No thanks. No contest."

The stupidest entry: someone named Diane Johnson.

(paraphrasing) "I'm voting for Kerry because I live in Europe and all the Europeans hate Bush. I'm a conformist and can't think for myself so I've got to agree with them."

You've got to love Amy Tan's comment: "I'm voting for Kerry, because I have a brain and so does he."

Yups. Thosuns whos is votin for Bush is dummies. Theres taint no other reesuns to splain these kreechures.

Normally I don't really care about the political leanings of the authors I read or the musicians I listen to, but when it comes to statements like the above-quoted one by Amy Tan that basically insult everyone as morons who don't vote the same way she does, my interest in buying any of their stuff goes right down to zero.

Make fun of Bush all you want, I might actually still consider giving you my money if you're a decent writer/musician/actor. Insult wholesale the people who vote for him, and you're outta here.

Robert Ferrigno sums it up best with one succinct phrase. "Most novelists live in their imagination................."
Seems to me that if that raggle-taggle mob of, mostly, literary nonentities were were all voting for Bush I'd really start to worry that I was missing something.

Kerry's a frickin' genius alright. You can always tell the real smart ones because they constantly contradict what they said last week.

I mean, only an Einstein-level intellect could come up with "I voted for it before I voted against it", right?

I've read some of Vonnegut's books. He used to be a not-so-bad author, if he kept his screeching down to a minimum. Not a great author, but readable.

But now he's lost it worse than Howard Dean or Ted Kennedy. I kept his books only for the perspective. But if they get lost during a move or some other accident, I won't replace them. I won't support the moonbat anymore with my hard earned shekels.

Vonnegut has always been very uneven. I am a science fiction fan, and "Sirens of Titan" is all but unreadable. "Slaugherhouse 5" was certainly interesting. Others, enhhh. The past 25 years he has written mostly self-indulgent crap. He's not the only one. I think once writers start getting applauded for their thinking or politics instead of the actual writing they do they quickly slide downhill. Norman Mailer, Truman Capote for instance once could write well. Mailer hasn't written anything worth reading since at least the 1960s. Capote was ridiculous from the time he tried to finish that load of crap roman a clef of his.

Look. Good writers are too busy writing good stuff to get interested in politics. If anyone is taking Amy Tan seriously, I figure her writing is either already in the toilet or swirling down the drain. I don't know why you should care what writers think about politics any more than you should about your dentist or the guy who tends to the public parks. Actually, odds are those two are more informed about useful stuff than the writers.

Don't pick on Diane Johnson (who after all co-wrote The Shining!)-- pretty much ALL the responses amounted to "Everyone I know is voting for Kerry so I don't dare do anything else." When did novelists all become such Babbitts, fearful of what the next guy might think if they dare to have a mind of their own?

"Really, who buys literature based on the author's political affiliation?"

More to the point, who bases their vote on what a novelist says?

So Tim can say Roger is intelligent because he's voting for Bush and the other novelists are stupid because their voting for Kerry and that's fine.

But Amy Tan can't say she's voting for Kerry because she's intelligent and other people are voting for Bush because they're stupid, that's wrong.

Lucky that Tim's partisan political views don't influence the stellar quality of his work, huh.

Speaking on the few intelligent and/or non-Left novelists round, WA's Hal Colebatch, who posts on this site sometimes, has recently had an SF block-buster published, "One War for Wunderland," telling of the invasion of a peaceful society by tiger-like aliens. An extract was published in Quadrant a few months back.

Jeff: If you're trying to say that lately Kurt Vonnegut sounds like a schizophrenic off his meds, I'd be hard pressed to disagree. My only point was that even arrogant paranoid hard-leftist like Vonnegut are capable of creating great works of art.

And don't forget Joseph Heller. I can only imagine what inane anti-US drivel he'd be spitting up right now if he was still alive, but damnit if Catch 22 isn't the funniest novel ever written.

So Tim can say Roger is intelligent because he's voting for Bush and the other novelists are stupid because their voting for Kerry and that's fine.

Eh, no, they're stupid because their reasons for voting Kerry are in most cases nothing but boilerplate leftist groupthink based on little reality and facts. For a comparison, I don't much like the fact that Mickey Kaus will vote for Kerry, but at least he has come to that decision through an honest appraisal of the facts.

Cough, cough, John Updike ...., Cough , cough.

Pre-emptive stike - i'm voting Bush.

Was anyone else amazed at how many of the pro-Kerry novelists' viewpoints seemed to be based on "Bush is embarassing and I just can't get out of bed in the morning unless the rest of the world likes me?"

Grow a spine, you guys. You come across as whimpering jellyfish who can't make a move without making sure that Pierre Sixpack in Paris is happy with our government. Surely you've learned by now to be immune to literary criticism; why can't you be a bit more thick-skinned about what meddling Europeans think of the US government?

I agree, Sean. I did read and appreciate Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five". I had my problems with it, but I couldn't argue with the basics.

It's sad that he went downhill so far and so fast.

I've read "The Wunder War" which Sue mentioned. Apart from beingh pacey SF, it is a very clever satire on the liberal and conservative mind-sets when faced with a merciless, uncompromising enemy. Good stuff!!!

We still have a few good novelists.

Eh, no, they're stupid because their reasons for voting Kerry are in most cases nothing but boilerplate leftist groupthink based on little reality and facts.

Plus a generous dose of their own frailties and insecurities palmed off on society at large. Man, you hear people saying that Bush is trying to control us with fear. I've had a hard time imagining the kind of people who are scared so witless that they cry out for Big Daddy to save us all from the mean men. I think I've found them, but they're mostly afraid of Bush.

The novelists have inspired me to write my own ham-handed satire, which you can find here.

Personally, I can't stand most of what I have read of Kurt Vonnegut's writing.

I don't blame you, Andrea. "Slaughterhouse Five" was the only book that I could assimilate, and that I read only once.

Now that I think about it, everything I read of Vonnegut was in high school classes. Haven't touched him since.

Too bad, he had potential way back then, and he wasted it going moonbat.