more on Orson Scott Card

[E.J.]

Background story HERE

Find the book at amazon HERE

this was brought to light by a very critical review on Rain Taxi which totally slams the book.

Some of my favorite comments:

Card has completely removed the dramatic stakes and haunting questions posed by the play, and the threadbare result is a failure of narrative craft on every level.

Neither does Card’s prose retain the flavor of Elizabethan English—or any other kind of flavor. These words taste like saltines without salt

The extent of the novella's failure is surprising—and embarrassing, given that Card is a skilled veteran novelist and Subterranean a well-respected press. The most polite thing for us to do would be to walk away and quietly forget the whole painful exercise. But Card does not deserve our polite amnesia. His failures should be known and remembered, because the revelation in his "revelatory new version" turns out to be a nightmare of vitriolic homophobia.

Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people. The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy—along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay.

[Gee Whillickers]

I've been following Orson Scott Card's continuous slide into homophobia and bigotry for quite a few years.

I was one of those people that discovered Ender's Game as a teen, and absolutely fell in love with it. I thought the writer

of such a work could do no wrong. He had some other good novels too, but then something quickly became noticeable.

Every book was a bit more obvious in how it pushed OSC's mormon religion. Every book was a bit more fundamentalist. A bit more bigoted,

and a bit more homophobic.

Then, some of his essays and speeches were even worse. Especially some of the stuff against gay marriage and other gay rights.

It truly is sad. Such a talented writer. Such a creative story teller. And more and more he is showing himself to be intolerant on so

many issues.

It's hard to fathom. And sad.

[DesDownunder]

As a man of the theatre, I am quite happy to have Shakespeare's plays presented as adaptations to suit a variety of interpretations.

I think doing Romeo and Julius is a good example, particularly if the two leading roles are into S&M.

I believe there would be great attraction for the star-crossed lovers to be dressed in metal, leather, and denim.

Think of yonder moonlight being reflected from their nipple rings or ankle chains.

More than one director has played up Romeo's relationship with Mercutio, in the sword fight scene, as being homoerotic.

As for Hamlet, there has always been a subtext of Hamlet querying his sexuality in the famous, "to be, or not to be," speech.

Let's face it, Shakespeare's writing is so rich that nearly any subtext can be justified into being an adaptation of the original.

Orson Scott Card however, has a different mission, I think; one that is really not worth worrying about at all.

From the look of Mr. Card's work, I'd guess his sex life was suffering something akin to a "winter of discontent."

[The Pecman]

I agree with much of the above. I was a champion of Card's excellent book for writers on "Point of View," published through Writers Digest Press. But his bizarre pro-Mormon and anti-gay slant over the past ten years or so has bewildered me.

You gotta wonder what demons plague the guy...

[Hoskins]

Here is an interesting thread on Metafilter about OSC and the Hamlet thing. Lots of interesting commentary from all over the internet.

Included within it are two old essays (also linked here) written some time ago about Card, specifically the bizarre-once-you-think-about-it mirroring of Hitler's life in the Ender saga, and even questioning whether or not Card actually wrote Ender's Game. I tend to think Ender reads differently than Card's other work, but that could be simple reinterpretation on my part.

And then there's the crazy that is Card's response to the writer.

I re-read Ender's Game not that long ago, and found it was a pretty flat read, obviously targeting a younger audience of which I'm not a part. And I've read and re-read the Maker stories several times - they are great too, although the Mormonite moralizing is a little tiring after a while.

Anyway, Card is nuts, I'm not buying any more of his books, and I sincerely hope that once he comes to terms with his own closet, he'll become a better man and maybe a better writer. But he'll need to be dragged from that closet kicking and screaming, I think.

[The Pecman]

The very fact that Card is a devout Mormon bothers me. Normally, I try to cut people some slack when it comes to their religion. But not too long ago, I had to work on some Mormon post-production projects here in LA (long story), and I did a little background research. What I found really kinda shocked me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_...tter-day_Saints

I have a couple of gay friends who were former Mormons, and they're extremely polarized on how screwed-up the church is. Some of the legends touted as gospel will just blow your mind, like the whole story about the gold plates with the secret language translated by Mormon founder Joseph Smith... where nobody can find the gold plates, nobody ever saw them except Smith, and he buried them in a secret location. (!!!)

Here I thought Scientology was nutty...