Requiem for a Pile-Up

Quick reminder: I’ll be at Dragon*Con over Labor Day selling copies of The Skybound Sea!  Come on by!

N.K. Jemisin is one of those authors that often makes me feel extraneous.

In a good way, mind you.  She is much like the basking crocodile, lunging out of the river with a spray of froth and a bellowing hiss to seize an important topic between her jaws and drag it beneath the waves, twisting, thrashing and death-rolling it until she prises a great morsel of meat from it.  Satiated, she wallows upon the banks, mouth agape to cool off in the sweltering sun.  While I, the humble oxpecker bird, swoop down to dart nimbly between her teeth, clutching a tiny tidbit of flesh from her mouth before flying away afore her mighty jaws can consume me, as well.

…it would also be like saying I am the Mini-Me to her Dr. Evil, but I liked my analogy much better.

Point being, there’s no shortage of instances where she manages to say things a lot better than I can, but I find myself wanting to chip in, regardless.  The latest scandal surrounding Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden by controversial author Victoria Foyt is one such instance.

Ms. Jemisin has already given a comprehensive run-down, as per the link above, but for a quick summary: a woman wrote a very racist book and got it talked about a lot.  Now, craftier people than myself have already given their input as to why the book is offensive, why the writing is bad, why this is a terrible precedent to set and why the fact that she was talked about in the first place is a very bad thing.  But something I wanted to address, oxpecker that I am, was a common thought I saw voiced in the wake of this scandal.

“Think of what this is doing for her publicity, though.”

Yes, indeed.  To the layman, it may appear that Ms. Foyt is getting quite a bit of press from her scandal.  There are those that say she stumbled into controversy and there are those that say she planned this all along.  A very surprising number of sources, some of them professional and almost all of them in agreement, suggest that, ultimately, this is a net gain for Foyt.

Scandal is publicity.  Controversy is publicity.  And any publicity is good publicity, so the common thought goes.

And I’m not sure I agree.

I’m certain we’re all quite familiar with the phenomenon, right?  Someone does or says something tremendously stupid, outrageous or off-kilter and gets instant attention.  That’s not too surprising; we’re instantly attracted to things that stand out and nothing stands out like someone standing in a spotlight and screaming at the top of their lungs (and if they’re screaming racial epithets or happen to be on cocaine at the time, they get that much more attention).

People have always paid attention to the loud, the ignorant and the tragic.  You’ve seen this before in Charlie Sheen, in Lindsay Lohan, in the weird kid who ate bugs in school (represent), in any buffoon who has demeaned his or herself for attention.  This is not surprising at all.

What is surprising (to me, at least) is that so many people, many of them people who frankly ought to know better, seem to consider that such public, blanket faux pases are, ultimately, beneficial to the author.

Granted, I’m not at all surprised by their logic.  Publicity equals word of mouth equals sales equals money, after all.  What I’m surprised about is the willingness to embrace, espouse and support the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

There most certainly is, my friends, and I write this for aspiring writers who may be deceived into thinking that stumbling into a controversy (at least, a controversy as stupid as Foyt’s) is akin to stubbing your toe on the Hope Diamond.

Let’s do a little exercise briefly.  Answer the following questions as honestly as you can.

Do you want Tom Cruise’s money?

Do you want Tom Cruise’s success?

Do you want Tom Cruise’s fame, house, cars, sexual potency and beach volleyball scenes?

Now…do you want that if it means you have to be Tom Cruise?

Most of the people I talk to will answer “yes” with great enthusiasm until that last question.  The concept works the same with Foyt’s scandal.

See, it’s one thing to be known for being controversial.  It’s an entirely different thing to be known for writing a book in which the main character dons blackface.  And the difference is that controversy is not a bad thing; it’s mutable, it changes, it has many aspects.  If you’re known for being controversial, then we can know that your future works will cause controversy and that is not an awful thing at all.

But if you’re known for having written a book in which the main character dons blackface, then you’ll be known for writing a book in which the main character dons blackface.

Whatever you do from now on, whatever you write, whatever you put out there, you will always be the author who tried to legitimize blackface.  When people talk about you, they will talk about how you had your main character be extolled for spewing racial slurs.  When people discuss you, they will discuss what a weird and awful thing you did.  When people think about you, they will think about many things: the controversy, the discussion, the argument, the condemnation…

…but not you.  And certainly not your work.

And that’s the problem with trainwreck publicity.  You’re only as famous as your disaster.  And disasters eventually fade from memory.

Controversies do not, though.  Stories do not.  Books do not.  Books are immortal.  As are their authors.

Some controversies are great.  Many books gained in fame, renown and importance by being controversies, by challenging the norm and by one person pushing against society.

Foyt’s controversy is not a great one.  It is one person pulling society onto herself.  Regardless of what sales come her way, however many books she writes, whatever else she does from here, she will always be that person who wrote that racist book.  Will it make her rich?  Maybe.  Will it make her publicized?  Definitely.  Will people remember her name?  Probably.

But not in any way you’d ever want to be remembered.