Brandon Sanderson urged his fans to take the high road after Wired ran a profile of the fantasy author that many found patronizing and offensive to Sanderson and his readers.
The article, written by Wired senior editor Jason Kehe, is based on a series of interviews the journalist did with Sanderson. In the profile, Kehe wrote that the Oathbringer and The Lost Metal author is “no great gift to English prose,” “a bad writer,” and “depressingly, story-killingly lame.”
Kehe also wrote about attending Dragonsteel, a convention centered around Sanderson’s novels. “As is typically the case at these things, there’s a general air—warmish, body-odored—of unselfconsciousness,” he said. “By my rough count, some three-quarters of the attendees are men, boys, menboys, blurring together in a mass of pale, fleshy nerdery in Sanderson-appropriate graphic tees.”
Sanderson responded to Kehe’s profile on Reddit. “I get that Jason, in writing it, felt incredibly conflicted about the fact that he finds me lame and boring,” he wrote. “I’m baffled how he seemed to find every single person on his trip—my friends, my family, my fans—to be worthy of derision.”
But he also defended Kehe, saying the journalist “wasn't looking for a hit piece” and “wrote what he felt he needed.”
“Please show him respect,” Sanderson wrote. “He should not be attacked for sharing his feelings.…I bear Jason no ill will. I like him. Please leave him alone. He seems to be a sincere man who tried very hard to find a story, discovered that there wasn’t one that interested him, then floundered in trying to figure out what he could say to make deadline. I respect him for trying his best to write what he obviously found a difficult article. He’s a person, remember, just like each of us.”
Sanderson’s latest novel, Tress of the Emerald Sea, will be published by Tor next week.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
