"You're Just Jealous"

You may think you're cool. But you'll never be "old bald man with shades, a turtleneck and a hipster beard cool".

I figure I'd better get this out of the way before Goodkind's rabid defenders hurl this accusation at me.

"You're just mad because you're jealous of Terry Goodkind's success!"

Uh...sure.

Allow me to say only this in response: if jealousy were my principle motivator, I would neither start with Goodkind, nor would I end with him. There are lots of authors doing gangbuster business who I'm not a fan of. I could just as easily make this kind of website about Stephanie Meyer, or EL James, or anyone who's made a ton of money writing dreck. Heck, I don't even consider Goodkind to be the worst fantasy author making money right now.

"Jealousy" implies that I wish I could do what he does, and get the same rewards for it that he does. Quite the opposite, really. Whatever I do in life, I set out to do it better than Goodkind does it, both because I don't think he produces quality work and because I have a feeling that no matter what else is true of Goodkind's success, he handles it like a mentally impaired five-year-old child. I strive, and admittedly often do not succeed, to handle whatever happens to me, good and bad, with at least a modicum of grace and decorum.

I certainly don't strive to hold a narcissistic view of myself and the work that I do. I get the feeling from Goodkind that no matter what he had ended up doing in his life, he would claim he does it better than anyone else and become very upset with you if you ever suggested otherwise. I understand that before writing became his primary job, he made custom furniture and paintings of landscapes and wildlife. I don't know what quality they are because Google turns up nothing on either. But I gotta wonder; did he treat his customers the same way he treats his readers? Did he demand fawning praise and turn bitter and hostile if they had the slightest problem with it? Maybe that's why he doesn't do it anymore.

My reaction to Terry Goodkind isn't one of jealousy but sheer disbelief that a man can achieve the sort of success that he has and still be just so...damned...ungrateful. Few other authors demand their readers approach his work only a certain way. Few of them tell their fans that they are enjoying the book wrong. Few make grandiose, hyperbolic claims about the quality of their work that even the most generous of their professional reviews don't suggest are remotely true. And few, if any, resort to bashing their own publishers and claiming some sort of injustice done against them because their publisher chose to market their genre work in the genre appropriate.

Now, before I go too much further, with this post or with this blog, I need to point out that most of the more incendiary stuff Goodkind has to say is rather old at this point, in many cases over a decade. And he's made attempts within the past five or six years to kinda/sorta make up for or walk back some of the worse stuff he's said. So, some people, even if they're not ardent defenders of Goodkind who would gladly drink his spit and call it champagne, feel like he's already made amends for his earlier behavior, and we can all just move on.

This is what I mean when I say so few people are willing to take him to task. When I first saw the responses to his attempts to soften his statements, it really felt like most people were willing to just let him get away with it, despite the fact that he didn't apologize or own up to bad behavior. Instead, he moved the goalposts and tried to suggest he didn't actually say what he said, or if he did, he didn't mean it the way we all took it, and it's our fault for misunderstanding him. Worse yet, in the same thread, the old behavior continues. Even just this past January, he created a stir with some seriously unprofessional, childish behavior that shows he's learned nothing. He hasn't realized the full extent of just how wrong his actions and statements have been, and he still thinks he's God's gift to readers who should be kissing his feet because he's still writing stuff you plebs can consume.

Ultimately, I'm doing this to defend fantasy against men like Terry Goodkind. Goodkind is on trial for character assassination, and I'm the prosecuting attorney. I hope to deliver all the evidence I can offer to show that Goodkind, with malice aforethought, unfairly smeared my beloved genre, its writers, its publishers and its fans, all for the purpose of self-aggrandizement. If he wishes to offer a defense, I encourage him to do so.

In the process, I hope to make people understand that a man like Terry Goodkind does not deserve your money. Even if you think his books are good, or at least "not that bad", a so-called defense I've actually seen used to excuse continuing to read them, I want people to feel that none of the work he has produced excuses his behavior, and in fact should only damn him further.

Either that or I want him to fully realize the depth and breadth of his actions and sincerely apologize. Apologize for repeatedly, year after year, heaping insults on the genre that made him famous, other authors writing within it and readers who love it, all to stroke his own ego.

But as I believe Goodkind may actually have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, that's unlikely to happen. So I'll settle for ruining him, or at least making the game attempt.