There is NO frelling evidence that Lewis Carroll was a pederast or a pedophile.

That he was a pedarast no, a pedophile (which deals with desire rather than neccesarily actions) - there is evidence. He maintained a secret stash of photos of nude little girls. That he took the photos, kept the photos, and kept them a secret, seems fairly strong evidence of at least the desire.

Somebody who couldn't cope with post-puberty women, yes.

Actually, once his family released his diaries, it turned out that he had several normal, healthy relationships with adult women. Some of them were women he'd photographed or known when they were little, so that put paid to the claim that once they hit puberty he couldn't cope, or wasn't interested.

Yes, he photographed pre-pubescent girls, and yes, the photos made me feel all squicky when I saw them. But apparently this hobby was fully accepted at the time, and it was only when he photographed or wanted to photograph pubescent girls that there were problems.

Now, we might say the whole society was pedophilic in that case, but whether Dodgson had a psychological or moral problem is not assured.

Even if he did, he took no action on it and did not incorporate it into his writing. OSC is active in his church and contributory to his political party; Pound was basically a propagandist for the fascii; Clancy contributes his time and money to the Republican party. I've no idea whether Tepper is still active with women's shelters, but all these authors incorporate their political and moral opinions into their writings.

And hey, Tepper often writes that being a Mormon is equivalent to being a pedophile, so full circle to Gus' argument!

For me it's a truth-in-advertising issue. I read Clancy and Tepper knowing that I'm going to be getting the authors' agendas shovelled down my throat, and I assume their fan bases read them BECAUSE of their agendas, not for great literary merit. OSC I was attracted to because I liked what I'd read of his science fiction, NOT because I wanted to read how Mormon doctrine fell on any given issue. When it became all-Mormon, all-the-time, I felt it was weaker than when he was an honest broker for his ideas. If that makes sense.

Wolfram, Nick read Magic Street and he really enjoyed it. Granted, he's not particularly sophisticated in his reading tastes, but it might be because he's 20. He said he identified with the main character so much that at some times during the book things that happened to the character depressed him. I don't think Nick knows anything about OSC personally, and he's a very liberal kid--more liberal than I.

Tepper often writes that being a Mormon is equivalent to being a pedophile

Is this one of those "all intercourse is rape" OTT headline-grabbers, or a serious opinion?

That he took the photos, kept the photos, and kept them a secret,

He always sought the permission of the parents of the children involved in advance. That seems somewhat less secretive to me. If he didn't tell other people he had the photographs, that seems to me to be part of the agreement he had with the parents. He wasn't attempting to force the children to keep the secret.

I'm not saying that he didn't in some way get off on the pictures. I am saying that there is no evidence that he represented a threat to any child.

My issue with Card is the unselfconscious emphasis on abused hypertalented children, and the frequency with which the abuse is sexual as well as mental.

I don't have to psychoanalyze Card to find this creepy and to want to stop reading the books, not because of political reactions, but because of squick.

I don't have to psychoanalyze Card to find this creepy

I think I'm the one who used the word "psychoanalyze," and I used it as a way of explaining that point when you realize you are no longer reading prose that serves the story, and have begun reading prose that serves as the author's personal stalking horse. I don't want him to tell me about his mother; but after that moment every development isn't "What does this mean to the characters?" but "What does this mean to the author?"

Which is irritating, even when it's not creepy.

Right -- I would never say a lot of Card's stuff does not end up creepy. I did enjoy some of his stuff includuing the early Hatrack river stuff. He really did give it the feel of a folktale (to me) in the early volumes.

Is this one of those "all intercourse is rape" OTT headline-grabbers, or a serious opinion?

Antecedent? Are you asking if it's my opinion that Tepper has equated Mormonism with pedophilia, or if Tepper's saying it's her opinion?

My textual support for my statement comes mostly from A Plague of Angels wherin the Mormon-analogue men kidnap little girls to marry. I think Tepper took the historical occurences of Mormons kidnapping girls to an extreme for literary effect, but she's quite large with the Mormon-hate and the male-hate, so I dunno, she could be going for the "all intercourse is rape" headline grab.

Me, I know Mormons historically married the girls off pretty young, but AFAIK they were looking to reproduce, so female puberty was a positive. Kind of like Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Which is irritating, even when it's not creepy.

Yep.

I assume their fan bases read them BECAUSE of their agendas, not for great literary merit.

I don't know that I'm Clancy's fanbase, but I did read quite a number of his books, because I thought he wrote engagingly (so long as I skipped over the loving descriptions of weapons and battleships and planes and... okay, so that's about a third of the books, but still). I probably am Tepper's fanbase, but I wouldn't say I read her for her agenda either (although as I recall from the bios at the back of her books, she worked for Planned Parenthood for some time) -- Grass contained one of the most interesting original worlds that I'd read, with an ecosystem both seriously thought out and intriguingly foreign (though I don't claim plausibility for it). Her politics are always there, and I completely understand how they can ruin the books for people, but I really do like her writing.