Tod Goldberg's Take On The Writings Of The VT Killer

Cousin Tod Goldberg, a published author and literary teacher, wrote an interesting piece on his blog dealing with talk of the disturbing writings of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Sueng Hui and the effect it may have on future creativity, etc. Quoting from Tod

"It's always dangerous to assume one's fictional creations are somehow manifestations of their inner most desires -- there's no ethical responsibility in writers to only create pleasant characters, nor to create characters that are in any way decent humans whatsoever or who have any emotional nuance. They might have a creative responsibility if they actually want their work to be readable -- and after having read Cho Seung-Hui's two plays I can report that his work was unreadable in the most base way, which is to say it doesn't appear he had much in the way of talent -- but in the end people's art is their own. They can make it as awful as they want, provided they don't want to actually earn a living from it."