What do you do when you find a writer has done something in their lifetime that is rather unsavoury and you don’t agree with? This is something I’ve been pondering for a couple of weeks now and I’m hoping I’ll have an answer by the time I finish writing.
The writer in question is William Mayne, he was born in 1928 and died in 2010 and while I haven’t read many of his works I have enjoyed the ones I did read. When I was young I very much enjoyed Earthfasts and never realised there were two sequels so when I came across Skiffy I remembered his name and picked it up feeling quite sure it would sell.
I asked the question on Facebook and Twitter without actually mentioning names or actions and got interesting responses. Most people were quite comfortable with the author having committed minor infractions of the law but if they did something major and used that experience within their books then they were quite uncomfortable reading their books again. They used examples such as pedophilia and murder as infractions of the law that would make them not want to read the books, although they were divided on law. Up to this point I hadn’t shared with them the name or infraction of the author.
William Mayne was imprisoned for two and half years for child sexual abuse, he appears to be on record of having told the girls he was only doing ‘what they wanted’ i.e. passing the buck and not accepting blame for his actions. I was originally looking at Mayne and his book Skiffy with the view to creating a better listing for it when I came across this information and it made me stop and ask for advice from the wider community. I am very uncomfortable selling this book and any other by this author. This is something that has been discussed by Catherine Bennett of The Guardian in 2004 and while I understand her point of view that if we stop publishing this author for this reason then we should really stop publishing other authors and here she mentions William Burroughs who killed his wife and Jeffrey Archer who has committed perjury, but this is my blog and bookshop and I get to make the decision whether I should stock him or not.
Here is where I’m at a great loss and can’t make a decision. On the one hand there is no subtext in his books that I’ve been able to find so just by reading them a child is not going to get any wrong ideas, on the other hand I’m very uncomfortable with the whole idea of having the book here. I was quite sure of what I was going to do until I read the article by Bennett and now I’m not quite sure again. While I’m wavering it will remain in stock, but I will continue thinking about it. Please, give me your opinions in the comment section and help me make up my mind.