I have a few but if I have to pick just 2 it would by VC Andrews and Bryn Greenwood. I only read the books that VC Andrews actually wrote. I am going to reread My Sweet Audrina soon as it’s the book that got me into her. Then All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood made me question my morality. I would never support a relationship like that in real life but it is so well written and speaks of a topic nobody wants to talk about. It also reminds me of my grandparents story so that’s probably the reason why I love that book so much. I love when books make me feel disturbed and make me question my sense of morality. I think since these books are fiction, my brain just lets the situations within them slide but I would never support it in real life. I’d be absolutely appalled like I was when I first heard my grandparents story when I was 15.
by Fit-Recognition-3148
28 Comments
Fun topic! The first two to come to mind for me are James Ellroy and William T Vollmann. Ellroy for his LA-paranoia patter, and Vollmann for his wordy messy humanity.
(I also had a formative experience with VC Andrews at age 10 or with FiTA :))
Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
The man produced propaganda for the Nazis during the occupation of France, and his efforts in this regard were so vitriolic that the Nazis told him to calm down.
I’ve only read Journey to the End of the Night and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and recommend it to anyone who wants to go into a pessimistic tail spin.
And can get past the whole “literally worse than the Nazis” bit of his character.
Yukio Mishima is similar. Japanese author who was in contention for a Nobel Prize. Openly fascist. Great author. Shit guy.
Rudyard Kipling.
I know he was an apologist for British imperialism and its abuses. He was a war hawk, as long as the cost of war wasn’t falling too heavily on his own family. His attitudes toward, and portrayal of, women and non-Westerners were complicated at best (although still decades ahead of many of his peers, in my opinion).
But damn, the man could write.
HP Lovecraft
Bukowski
Oh boy…Cassandra Clare. I picked up her books in middle school during one of the loneliest and most unsure times of my life and I flew through them, and saved up my own money to buy her new releases. I cant forget the impact she had on me
Does Orson Scott Card count?
I loved The Mists of Avalon and thought Marion Zimmer Bradley was like some great feminist writer (I was very young). Then, I learn she was horrific and like covered up her husband’s abuse on children. Just a terrible person. But that book was so good.
Harlan Ellison – his intros to his books are almost better than his stories, which are fantastic.
Saw him speak a couple times and certain subjects wound him up so much you thought he might pass out from not stopping to breathe.
Ezra Pound. Poet.
Anti-semite. But he wrote Personae. And the Cantos.
Knut Hamsun. It seems he was a little bit of a Nazi sympathizer but that Naz-symp could write.
Knut Hamsun. Beautiful writing that really captures the nuance of what it means to be human. Just don’t look into his politics.
My childhood favorite was Laura Ingalls Wilder. AS an adult they are a bit harder to read.
Anne McCaffrey. I love the world of Pern and have found it fascinating since I was a kid.
William S Burroughs.
Not saying that I understand his novels, of which I have read several, but I find him fascinating. Some of the “non-fiction ” that he has written, essays and such, are extremely interesting.
Brett Easton Ellis
Henry Miller
Mishima definitely. I don’t know if JG Ballard or Tanizaki are controversial today (not something I keep up with) but I love them too.
I’ve never read a VC Andrews but a podcast I love recaps/reviews her on occasion and… I’m kind of obsessed. She’s like trauma porn camp. Everything about My Sweet Audrina is NUTS.
It’s easy to make fun of David Foster Wallace as poser-bro-lit, but Infinite Jest–while clearly written by a guy who was a sexist–changed my life when I read it. I love his essays too, mostly.
I know people who worked with him, and in the late 90s, when my first wife was ill with the cancer that eventually killed her, he heard about it, and sent me a signed copy of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, out of the blue. I treasure it.
I was teaching a book of his essays when he killed himself. My students were traumatized. One of them wrote me to say she felt like someone she’d just fallen in love with had been lost, and I knew what she meant.
Too many to list: Gide, Hamsun, Mishima, Anne Sexton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Foucault, Agamben…
And I’m about to start reading Nietzsche, because my taste in authors is beyond good and evil
Hunter S Thompson to an extent. Not insanely controversial but enough and his work is still so good
Philip K. Dick. One of the most prolific science fiction authors of all time, and in my opinion one of the most fascinating minds to emerge from the 20th century. I own the majority of his work, including the [Exegesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exegesis_of_Philip_K._Dick) which could be considered an entire controversy of it’s own. I view him as huge inspiration and a terrible role model. He made plenty of mistakes in his life and his books aren’t exactly known for being the height of modern prose. And yet his influence is like an alien invasion right out of one those books; it’s everywhere and nobody’s noticed.
Tamora Pierce.
She’s gotten a lot of flak over the years for writing a very controversial and questionable student-teacher and minor-adult relationship (Daine/Numair) into her *The Immortals* book quartet since she published the final book in that series, *In the Realm of the Gods*, back in 1996, as well as another extremely questionable relationship between a human and a crow in her *Trickster’s Choice/Trickster’s Queen* duology in 2004. However, her worldbuilding for Tortall is amazing.
Roald Dahl was my favorite author as a kid even though I read one of the earlier versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the Oompa Loompas weren’t cute orange creatures like in Willy Wonka.
Then I learned about his antisemitism as an adult. I even read a sample of his that showed it. At first it read like standard leftwing Anti Zionism. I wondered if the accusations of antisemitism were conflating Anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but unfortunately no. His essay went on to imply the plight of the Palestinians was being ignored because Jews controlled the media. Yikes.
Robert A. Heinlein is my go to. Sure, his views on women were both problematic and rather forward thinking in some regards but goodness can that man write.
Well Roald Dahl is IMO among the most legendary writers ever, I don’t consider his books controversial at all, but he said some very hectic anti Semitic things outside of his writing. Doesn’t diminish his writing one bit for me, notwithstanding that I’m Jewish.
Marion Zimmer Bradley. She was my introduction to adult fantasy books in the 90s and I still love the Avalon saga and The Fall of Atlantis. I’m not throwing away the books I have, but I’m not buying any of her other books either. It sucks.