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.

My textual support for my statement comes mostly from A Plague of Angels wherin the Mormon-analogue men kidnap little girls to marry.

Which were the Mormon-analogues? I don't remember them -- though there are so many bits in that novel, I have trouble remembering them all. I'm pretty sure she equates all patriarchal institutions with fear-based oppression of women, so it's not a shock. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with man-hating -- she certainly shows a willingness to see the worst in them, but she has a number of "good" male characters (well, if I'm remembering correctly).

This interests me because I'm trying to learn how to make a political statement when I write without beating people with it. It might be easier in crime fiction land, although my boyfriend in my tag is very careful to refute any strong intentions in that area. Instead though, I think he sneaks it in with the cops, dealers, and about forty-seven new to me words for pot. I know that all chronic is gage, but is all gage chronic? Or just hydroponic?