The Story as a Rorschach Blot

(Still in recovery from my fever but am chafing at the rest period. In the meantime, am venting some writing steam like a train.)

So, when do you separate the story from the storymaker?

I ask this question after reading one my top fave writers, Dan Simmons, explain his reason for his controversial story in his April 2006 Message post. That "message" of his generated a minor ruckus with parts of the SFF community and political blogosphere accusing him of racism or lauding him of patriotism depending on their political stripes.

Obviously, there's nothing wrong about writers having their agenda when writing their stories. Author Terry Goodkind writes his Sword of Truth fantasy novels loaded with Ayn Randian/ right-wing political perspective. (It's his denial that his fantasy novels are in fact, non-fantasy that get him much derision). There are also others, like SF writer Orson Scott Card as well as New Weird fictionist China Miéville.

Still, I thought the argument against Simmons boiled down to-- as one commenter in this comment thread here succinctly says-- what extent should "the declaration that a work is fictional absolves the author of responsibility for the views expressed there"?

To answer, he notes in his May-June 2006 Message:

But no politics, as such, have ever been introduced into the Messages from Dan before, just as no politics, as such, have ever been central (or unambiguous) in my novels. Why start now?

One could say that whatever political message he was supposedly trying to deliver in the controversial April message was sufficiently denied there. Moreover, he lambasts those who thought that his message was too ambiguous:

Speculative fiction has an honorable and subversive history. It is not limited to Amazing Tales of technology or the adventures of supermen and its plots are not confined to the retelling of fairy tales. Speculative fiction includes... a large subset of "if this social trend continues…" cautionary tales penned by the likes of George Orwell and H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley and John Brunner and Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth and Harlan Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut and many others.

He goes on quite a bit in defending his story and basing his arguments on a number of sources. It made me realize that, for someone writing such a small snippet of a story, it's damn well researched. Which, in turn, made me think, No wonder a lot of people thought he was serious.

But then I realized-- does it matter what the writer believes in when the story is done? (Or all is said and done?) After all, Simmons stated it himself: it's a Rorschach story, i.e. what the reader sees in the story is what the reader believes in and not necessarily what the writer believes in. Which may answer the question whether or not Simmons believes in what he wrote to begin with.

The above commenter criticized Simmons for not taking responsibility for the views expressed in the story. But what if the said views wasn't Simmon's own but rather a thought he pursued to its logical conclusion? Isn't that the usual objective-- and purview-- of speculative fiction? To express ideas we normally don't?

*phew*

Oh these tangled webs we weave. I'd rather believe that a story is a story and leave it at that. Or leave it... as a word to the wise.