Prolific author James Patterson is apparently branching out into a new literary genre: The hot take. Patterson, who recently teamed up with Dolly Parton for a new book, opined on his lengthy career, which he believes wouldn’t have happened today due to white male authors experiencing, uh, racism.
The 72-year-old author made the controversial remarks during an interview with The Sunday Times, where he essentially accused the entire entertainment industry, from TV, to film, to publishing, of pushing out “another form of racism” against white males who are “struggling” to find work.
“What’s that all about?” Patterson said via USA Today. “Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.”
Fortunately, Patterson stopped there and didn’t start voicing even more controversial thoughts on how Woody Allen got a bad beat when his memoirs were canceled by Hatchett. Except, nope, Patterson went right for that, too. The author clearly had some things to say, folks:
“I hated that,” Patterson said of the publishing house pulling Allen’s book. “He has the right to tell his own story.”
He added: “I’m almost always on the side of free speech.”
Wow. After that, Patterson’s comments on creating Black detective Alex Cross seemed slightly less weird. Emphasis on slightly because your guess is as good as ours as to what any of this means.
“I just wanted to create a character who happened to be Black,” Patterson said. “I would not have tried to write a serious saga about a Black family. It’s different in a detective story because plot is so important.”
We’re just gonna slowly back away from that one and say a silent prayer for Dolly Parton, whose sweet, generous love of books unfortunately hitched her to this wagon. (It’s not your fault, Dolly!)
(Via USA Today)