Donna Minkowitz got it so very wrong. Orson Scott Card is not Ender or Bean or any of the other characters in his books. I am continually amazed when people confuse authors, actors, or even comedians with the books they write, or the characters they portray. When I worked in Silicon Valley, I knew computer execs who couldn't, or just plain wouldn't, figure out how to use a computer, and were perfectly happy to leave those tasks up to their secretaries. Never confuse a product with its producer. Minkowitz was truly the naive one in this equation. Why would you expect an author to be just like you, or even hold the same views as you simply because you admire his work?

--Deeanna Franklin
Rockville, Md.

Besides reading "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow," did Donna Minkowitz do any research before conducting her interview with Orson Scott Card?

I've read at least a half dozen of Card's books, plus various reviews, columns and essays he's written. (It's worth noting that "Ender's Game" is but the first book of a four-volume series, and that "Ender's Shadow" isn't strictly a sequel. It recapitulates the first book, but from a different point of view.) Although I don't agree with many of his beliefs, none of Card's quotes in Minkowitz's article particularly surprised me.

Card is both outspoken and prolific. Had Minkowitz taken the time to dig further into his body of work, or even read a back issue of [science fiction magazine] Locus for an interview with him, she wouldn't have been so shocked and horrified that he doesn't share her world view as a "Jewish lesbian radical."

Idolizing any fellow writer is a dangerous habit for a journalist. To get up on your high horse when an author's personality doesn't jibe with your willfully idealized vision of him or her strikes me as foolish in the extreme.

-- Michael Berry

Donna Minkowitz should be held up as an example in journalism schools -- a bad example. Her interview with Orson Scott Card is all about herself. While I realize that's partly the point, I find it self-indulgent and much less entertaining than a serious talk with Card by a less prejudiced writer would have been.

-- Sean Brodrick

I find it ironic that Minkowitz repeatedly accuses Card of the worst moral deficiencies, all the while wishing that she could "blast Card into tiny fragments whose DNA will never bother [her] again" and finishing up the article by wishing him "a very lousy rest of his life." That's very admirable coming from someone who proclaims that "the foundation of all ethics, for me, is always whether something hurts anyone." The rhetoric sounds very empty indeed after such a juvenile display of name-calling and demonizing.

-- Paul Christian Glenn

Reading the interview, I grieved along with the author for the loss of a hero. I never respected any author as much as I did Orson Scott Card, and damn but it hurt to find my ideals crushed. Kudos to Donna Minkowitz for sticking to her guns, at least as much as possible.

-- Meera Bhat

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