When good writers aren't good people -- Garbo
Conrad Aiken was terrible to his wives. Lewis Carroll photographwed creepy images of young girls looking like murder victims. Jane Rice wrote of a brave heroine in "The Refugee," and also worked hard as a conservative Roman Catholic to end reproductive choice. Paul Bowles' wife, Jane, ignored or enabled her husband's inappropriate sexual behavior as did Marion Zimmer Bradley. William Burroughs "accidentally" shot his wife in the head with an arrow, killing her. Both H.P. Lovecraft and Kate Chopin were actively racist in their lives, the former more obviously within his body of work.
It's a given that a lot of creative people can be addicted, never able to get to work on time, in debt up to their eyeballs. There are the ones who did one big bad thing, and others who did all their dealings in the shadowy alleys of life. But it used to be that just because you were a total creep was no reason you couldn't be celebrated, successful, and emulated. In fact, you might seen as a genius when in fact you were talented with a flair for personal drama.
There's been a shift -- maybe too far? -- the other way. Biographies expose every harsh word said to a spouse, every weakness in keeping a marriage vow, and they're illustrated with drunken mug shots.
How good to we expect people in general, mus less writers to be? Some of the people I like and admire most don't behave all that well or obey even reasonable rules. I overlook a lot of faults, assuming there's no violence or sexual contact with vulnerable folks. So I read and find value in certain books even when I know the authors are or were creeps.
But does this ever taint me? I sometimes wonder. You know, like those forbidden books written by demonic characters in horror stories, penned in the blood of who-knows-what. There are certain writers so awful that I don't want any of their stuff in my house. I won't make a list here; I'm no censor or book-burner. I'll let others choose for myself.
Besides personal moral failings, I do struggle with books which contain messages I strongly disagree with. Not so much political content, but more beliefs or outlook on life stuff. For example, I really loved the late Sue Grafton's A to Z Kinsey Milhone books up to where all the trouble started for me. Somewhere in the Q or R part of the alphabet, Milhone has a character believe he was sexually molested when young, and then it's proved that he's just crazy and imagined the whole thing. I was unhappy about this plot development, but okay, in real life people have gotten confused about what did and didn't happen when they were very young. I was irritated but I let it go.
And then Grafton came back in the next book and there was another two-page diatribe about people who claim they were abused when they weren't. And I shut the book right there and never finished the series.
Everybody doesn't have to write didactic literature, I know. Writing doesn't exist solely to improve the human race. Every writer doesn't have to be a great person off-the-page. But writers have a lot of influence and the ones who misuse their power make me angry and cause me to turn away from their work.
Oooh the pain this can cause. I adored Orson Scott Card. Several of the later Ender's books had even more impact than even the great first one, for me. Until I read some of his racist and homophobic essays on his website. It hurt so much. I threw out my collection. Tearfully. Thanks Garbo.
ReplyDeleteDr.Ekpen Your spell worked and brought my husband back to me. You gave me support when I was feeling hopeless. I feel truly blessed to have found your email address. I sincerely hope others will take that leap of faith and let you help them as you have helped me.for those of you who want to contact him reach him on his email address: (ekpentemple@gmail. com) you will never regret contacting him… He is capable of restoring your relationship and marriage problems like he did for me.
DeleteI've tried to keep the personal life and beliefs separate from the work whenever possible, in literature and everything else. As you note, it gets much more complicated when those beliefs begin to intrude in the work itself. I'm strongly resistant to allowing bad beliefs and/or politics to automatically color someone's work and, worse, to somehow completely negate it. I'll instead tend to stick with the work I enjoyed and found admirable, and compartmentalize the unsavory elements. After all, it's not as if I'm inviting the person into the family.
ReplyDeleteThe trend in recent years to hold a sort of secular court of eternal damnation has been very troubling. I refuse to allow some bad actions to nullify the good, leading us on a fairy tale quest for purity and perfection. We each must follow our own lights in this, of course.
The topic of recovered memory, as you mention with respect to Grafton, is a tricky matter for me. On the one hand, I've come to see how unreliable memory - and so "eyewitness testimony" - so often is. I've also seen how things we're told or otherwise dwell on can so easily become seemingly strong memories. Most often it's a benign thing, a funny little family story about someone as a young child that the child heard recounted so many times growing up that they believe it's an actual, personal memory, often in great detail. Occasionally some key information will come to light - most damning is a photograph related to the time and players - that will contradict the official memory and help reveal it as something no more real than a story heard in childhood, nurtured by the child's imagination.
My conflict with it is that there are deep, strong reactions and behaviors of mine that seem to speak loudly of one or more very traumatic incidents somewhere deep, back in my childhood. Things that will stop me cold in my tracks when triggered by some scene or reference. A place I can't get myself to look. Not-quite-memories that make me not want to exist if it's a binary choice between existing with those feelings and simply not being.
In regards to artists and their art, I see foibles and mistakes, and outright wrongness, as being snapshots in a larger panorama. Being a flibbertigibbet, myself, I will let them find their way, while probably ignoring them for awhile. If I've loved a writer or filmmaker who has disappointed me, I will usually still check in. For those writers who were sordid, yet brilliant, I just acknowledge it is all true. Just as it is of myself.
ReplyDeleteGarbo, you are salt of the earth, and your conscientiousness is beautiful and comforting to me.
Dr.Ekpen Your spell worked and brought my husband back to me. You gave me support when I was feeling hopeless. I feel truly blessed to have found your email address. I sincerely hope others will take that leap of faith and let you help them as you have helped me.for those of you who want to contact him reach him on his email address: (ekpentemple@gmail. com) you will never regret contacting him… He is capable of restoring your relationship and marriage problems like he did for me.
ReplyDelete