Hamlet's Father Wrap-Up -- Orson Scott Card Speaks Out (but should have kept his mouth shut...)

WARNING:  Lots and lots of links in this post.  May I advise the "open link in new tab" option?

Wrong Links...

Now that Hamlet's Father has been well and thoroughly sporked (and returned to the unlucky library from whence it came), it's time for a final wrap-up regarding this book.  But first, a word from OSC himself.

After some scathing negative reviews of Card's book from various media outlets (Wikipedia's article on the book cites The SF Site, io9, The Guardian, and Rain Taxi in particular -- that last one is quite good), Card decided to go on the defense.  Because a book that turns one of the most famous plays in history into a homophobic morality tale needs defending, sure... *rolls eyes*  So he took to his website, Hatrack River, to set the record straight.  (No pun intended.)

Despite having just provided a link to Card's response, I'm reposting it below with my own commentary.  Simply providing the link to prove I'm not making this up, I suppose...

Normally I don't respond to reviews, especially when the reviewer clearly has an axe to grind.  But the dishonest review of Hamlet's Father that appeared in Publisher's Weekly back in February of 2011 has triggered a firestorm of attacks on me.  I realize now that I should have answered it then and demanded a retraction, because while the opinions of reviewers are their own, they have no right to make false statements about the contents of a book.

Um... I looked up the review in question, and while it's surprisingly short, it's really not inaccurate at all.  And why is it that so many artists, be they writers or filmmakers or video game designers or simple traditional artists, seem to think that any negative or critical review of their work is an attack?  I understand one's often quite close to their own work, but honestly, most people aren't attacking or trolling you, but just trying to point out the flaws in your work.  If you can't learn to take criticism, maybe you shouldn't be sharing your work with the public.  (Here's a couple of great comics on DA about accepting -- and giving -- critique, something more artistic types need to learn at some point.)

The review ends with the sentence: "The writing and pacing have the feel of a draft for a longer and more introspective work that might have fleshed out Hamlet's indecision and brooding; instead, the focus is primarily on linking homosexuality with the life-destroying horrors of pedophilia, a focus most fans of possibly bisexual Shakespeare are unlikely to appreciate."

Since my introduction to the book states that I was not remotely interested in Hamlet's "indecision and brooding" in Shakespeare's version of the story, I wonder how carefully the reviewer read the book.

Your Hamlet did do his share of brooding, actually, albeit mostly in the form of "wah, Daddy never loved me, wah, I don't wanna be king, wah."  And seriously, you're going the "did you even read the book" route?  This is the childish sort of tactic you see fanboys resorting to in response to Amazon reviews; seeing a professional author lowering himself to this tactic is just pitiful.

But the lie is this, that "the focus is primarily on linking homosexuality with... pedophilia."  The focus isn't primarily on this because there is no link whatsoever between homosexuality and pedophilia in this book.  Hamlet's father, in the book, is a pedophile, period.  I don't show him being even slightly attracted to adults of either sex.  It is the reviewer, not me, who has asserted this link, which I would not and did not make.

Except that Hamlet's father WAS a homosexual in this book!  He preferred boys, so therefore he was a homosexual pedophile.  There's no mention whatsoever of him going after Ophelia or any other girl, so he's not straight or bisexual.  Homosexuality and pedophilia are not mutually exclusive, you know...

Because I took a public position in 2008 opposing any attempt by government to redefine marriage, especially by anti-democratic and unconstitutional means, I have been targeted as a "homophobe" by the Inquisition of Political Correctness.  If such a charge were really true, they would have had no trouble finding evidence of it in my life and work.  But because the opposite is true -- I think no ill of and wish no harm to homosexuals, individually or as a group -- they have to manufacture evidence by simply lying about what my fiction contains.

Ah yes, the old "it's a conspiracy against me!" argument.  You realize that the more you claim that it's not your fault, you're just the victim of "dang dirty trolls," the worse you look to both your fans and critics?  I will also point out that a) wanting to deprive homosexuals of their rights is definitely wishing harm upon them, to some degree, and b) I have seen no review yet that has lied about what your work contains.  Perhaps they have read into your work deeper than you would have liked, but so far I've found no fabrications.  

The truth is that back in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was definitely not fashionable to write sympathetic gay characters in fiction aimed at the mainstream audience, I created several sympathetic homosexual characters.  I did not exploit them for titillation; instead I showed them threading their lives through a world that was far from friendly to them.  At the time, I was criticized by some for being "pro-gay," while I also received appreciative comments from homosexual readers.  Yet both responses were beside the point.  I was not writing about homosexuality, I was writing about human beings.

I think the best sort of writers accomplish this, actually -- ones who have a diverse cast yet still focus more on the characters being, well, characters than on what makes them diverse.  Too often in Hollywood or in fiction in general, you can tell a character has been added simply to represent a minority instead of to actually fill a role in a story.  You can often tell these "token" characters from actual characters by asking yourself "Would this character still have an individual personality and/or purpose in the story if they were white/straight/male/non-handicapped/cis-gendered/etc.?"

I haven't read much else by Card, and nothing with a homosexual character, so I can't say whether he's accomplished what he's claimed.  But according to this article on Salon, that isn't the case.  A homosexual character is made to marry a woman "for the good of society" in his Homecoming saga, and by all appearances the less I say about Songmaster besides Unfortunate Implications, the better...

My goal then and today remains the same: To create believable characters and help readers understand them as people.  Ordinarily I would have included gay characters in their normal proportions among the characters in my stories.  However, since I have become a target of vilification by the hate groups of the Left, I am increasingly reluctant to have any gay characters in my fiction, because I know that no matter how I depict them, I will be accused of homophobia.  The result is that my work is distorted by not having gay characters where I would normally have had them -- for which I will also, no doubt, be accused of homophobia.

Stop blaming it on your critics.  Nothing is stopping you from writing homosexuals, Card.  Just write them the same as any other character, except they prefer the same sex rather than the opposite.  Gays are human too, and while there are certainly "camp" homosexuals out there, most of them are pretty much the same as regular humans outside of orientation.

But Hamlet's Father, since it contained no homosexual characters, did not seem to me to fall into that category.  I underestimated the willingness of the haters to manufacture evidence to convict their supposed enemies.

*record skip noise*

What?  Wat?  WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??!!

Another image I've been using quite a bit in this spork

Card, you specifically stated that several characters in your book -- Horatio, Laertes, Rozencrantz, and Gildenstern, your freaking title character -- now preferred men over women, and while you might not have intended it  you dropped plenty of hints that Hamlet might be gay as well.  HOW DOES THIS NOT MAKE THEM HOMOSEXUAL???  I would dearly love to hear your definition of homosexuality, because it's obviously FAR different from mine.  Does the fact that most of the characters in the book were molested as children magically not make them gay?  

And "haters?"  Seriously?  Are you suddenly Tara Gilesbie of My Immortal fame now?  Not everyone who doesn't like your work or sees glaring flaws and/or disturbing implications in it is a "hater," Mr. Card.

To show you what I actually had in mind in writing Hamlet's Father, here is the introduction I wrote for its publication in book form.  I'm as proud of the story as ever, and I hope readers will experience the story as it was intended to be read.

This introduction was covered in an earlier spork, but it might have made more difference if it had actually been INCLUDED IN THE BOOK.  Just my thoughts...

Final Thoughts

Dear Mr. Card, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that you did not mean to make Hamlet's Father as detestable and homophobic as it comes across to readers, critics, and this humble sporker.  I'm going to assume your sheltered upbringing and blissful ignorance is more responsible for taking one of William Shakespeare's best-known works, throwing it in a meat grinder, and assembling a Frankenstein's monster of nasty implications from it, rather than outright malice.  After all, someone once said (no idea who, the phrase has been attributed to multiple people) to never attribute to malice what can be attributed to plain old stupidity.

All that said, I'd like to introduce you to a little concept called Death of the Author.  Sounds morbid, but the concept is simply the theory that "an author's interpretation of his own work is no more valid than any other reader's or critic's."  And while I don't necessarily agree with this philosophy, it still stands here.  Whatever you intended when you wrote Hamlet's Father, it's obvious that a lot of people interpret your work far differently than you do.  And you can post as many responses as you want screaming "IT'S NOT LIKE THAT," but that doesn't change how other people will perceive your work.  

You say you're proud of this story.  Proud enough of it to keep fighting over it?  Proud enough of it to make people forget about Ender's Game and only remember you for your controversial views on homosexuality, and for a sub-par retelling of Shakespeare?  Because even if you went back and excised the homosexual/pedophiliac content from the story, it truly is dreadful.  The characters are as interesting as a flat sheet of paper, the writing is bland and loses much of the magic of Shakespeare's prose, and you ended up eliminating or fatally truncating many of the most iconic scenes from the play in your work.  Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was more faithful to the original play than this book.

Far be it from a lowly sporker and fanfic writer to tell you what to do, Mr. Card, but I would strongly advise you to distance yourself from this book as much as you can.  Don't keep defending it, don't insist that everyone who finds problems with its story and subtext is lying to make you look bad, don't keep throwing a tantrum and insisting "it's not like that, everyone's just hating on me!"  Just call this book an Old Shame, move on with things, and never speak of it again.  

And to my readers -- DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.  Don't expect to get any perverse sense of "so bad it's good" entertainment out of it, don't read it purely for the spectacle of it, don't read it thinking you're going to get an interesting re-interpretation of Hamlet out of it.  It's truly not worth it.  There are many other fascinating re-imaginings and analyses of Hamlet out there, not to mention the original work itself.  Hamlet's Father is vile in its implications, boring to read, an insult to Shakespeare and his fans, and far too thin a volume to justify its $30+ asking price on Amazon.

I hesitate to say this is the absolute worst book I have ever read -- The Legend of Rah and the Muggles currently holds that title, though I'm pretty sure Revealing Eden will steal that spot once I'm finished with it -- but it certainly is one of the most detestable things I've ever picked up.  Thank goodness it's over, at least...

...wait, I have Revealing Eden to finish now.  Guuuuuuuhhhhhhh...