Re: Who is John Galt?
Many of Heinlein's characters are famously like this: a little too close to the author for him to have achieved "parallax" in writing them. That doesn't necessarily mean bad writing or even a bad reading experience, but at that point it does basically become a matter of whether the author is someone you'd like to have a beer with (Heinlein up until he was about 40, yes; after, not so much).
There are also always going to be writer:reader combinations that click or don't. For instance, I love Rex Stout so much I just can't tell whether what's going on in his books is good writing -- all I know is they're wonderful. At the opposite end, I would go well out of my way just for the pleasure of punching Margaret Atwood in the face, as a person, so I can't evaluate her writing (except that at the very beginning of The Robber Bride, before I realized the full shock horror of her unsuitability to breath oxygen, I thought she might be on to something. But that could also be blind squirrel syndrome.)
Many of Heinlein's characters are famously like this: a little too close to the author for him to have achieved "parallax" in writing them. That doesn't necessarily mean bad writing or even a bad reading experience, but at that point it does basically become a matter of whether the author is someone you'd like to have a beer with (Heinlein up until he was about 40, yes; after, not so much).
There are also always going to be writer:reader combinations that click or don't. For instance, I love Rex Stout so much I just can't tell whether what's going on in his books is good writing -- all I know is they're wonderful. At the opposite end, I would go well out of my way just for the pleasure of punching Margaret Atwood in the face, as a person, so I can't evaluate her writing (except that at the very beginning of The Robber Bride, before I realized the full shock horror of her unsuitability to breath oxygen, I thought she might be on to something. But that could also be blind squirrel syndrome.)
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