I just read his political views, and I guess this is why I never read about authors before reading their books. It's hard not to let personal differences in social views colour your perception of their work - which could be excellent when read without bias.
agree totally, likewise for music, I try hard to avoid any knowledge about artists I like life, it invariably colors there work in my mind.
I don't think it's possible to create something that is different without being a little unusual. Could anyone work a nine to five job be a good stable citizen and then come home and write a stephen king novel, or an enders game?
Phillip K Dick is an example that always springs to mind, he wrote so many books, and was diagnosed with mental disease. I have read a quote that aliens dictated his books to him, can't track it down now. Where would Hollywood be without an endless supply of phillip K. Dick novels?
Robin Williams has been diagnosed manic depressive, when he take his medication he is no longer funny he has said.
The idea that creativity is neatly pigeon holed without spilling over into the rest of your life, for good or bad, is just as nonensical as that review (I always thought the book was a standard teenage angst sort of thing).
Dick is a prime example, yeah. I don't like many of his works, they seem far too paranoid, but I find it sad that his mind as so twisted. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is brilliant on multiple levels, and it's one of the best pieces of literature from the last century.
Creativity can't be pigeonholed, and it's silly to ever assume that it can be. I agree. The fact that it can't be neatly sorted is what makes it creativity. (A teacher once told my classmates and I that CollegeBoard approached his top class to give them a set of multiple-choice "creativity" tests. What a sickening idea. Luckily, the idea was wholly scrapped because all of the top kids gave radically different answers.)
A book should be irrelevant of its author.