The art vs artist subject pops up again after the Alice Munro news—on one side are people who can no longer read Alice Munro, condemning her for having compassion for fictional characters but not for her own daughter; on the other side are those who call for separating the art from the artist, saying that we shouldn’t have to approve of the writer’s personal behaviour in order to enjoy their work—but is it always so clear-cut and simple? I don’t think so.
Are the unpleasant things present in their works?
You can read Dickens’s novels and ignore the stuff he wrote elsewhere about Indians, but you can’t read Edith Wharton without seeing her attitudes about Jews. You can enjoy Gabriel García Márquez’s novels and ignore his friendship with Fidel Castro, but you can’t watch many 60s French films without seeing their naïve enthusiasm for communism and the Soviet Union. Much harder to focus on merit and ignore an author’s unpleasant side if it’s present in their works.
Things could also be complicated. You can see on the page Tolstoy’s sexist views on women and unhealthy relationship with sex, but at the same time, he created some of the finest female characters in literature, such as Anna, Dolly, Natasha, Marya, Sonya, Vera, and so on.
Then what do you do with films? You can ignore Hitchcock’s treatment of his actresses, but could you watch Last Tango in Paris (again) once you know what’s actually happening to Maria Schneider on the screen?
Talent and importance
I’m happy never watching another Jackie Chan film for the rest of my life. I probably won’t bother with Sean Penn either. But to never watch a Roman Polanski film would be a much harder choice to make—Chinatown is a masterpiece.
Most people would agree that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are in many ways nasty, or have nasty views, but you would miss out on a lot if you refused to read them, or read them and only focused on the nastiness. But I’m not convinced it’s a huge loss that I haven’t got to Solzhenitsyn—he wrote some important books and people read them despite many wrong-headed views—but I’ve got Vasily Grossman, I don’t get the impression Solzhenitsyn is a must-read.
Time
There’s a difference between being antisemitic in the 19th century and repeating antisemitic tropes and blood libel today. There’s a difference between having sympathy for communism in the 1960s and praising Stalin or Mao Zedong today.
I would add, especially after reading a piece recently about Roger Waters, that there is nothing naïve and embarrassing about being unable to separate the art from the artist if the artist is alive and being vile before your very eyes.
The deader the artist, the better.
Among the writers who mean the most to me, Shakespeare and Cervantes died 400 years ago—they’re no longer capable of surprising and disappointing us, but if something resurfaces, I wouldn’t even flinch—their contemporary Caravaggio after all was a murderer, it doesn’t matter.
We all draw a line somewhere
As long as people don’t call for censorship and other forms of cancelling, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to dismiss someone as philistine or naïve if they’re unable to read a writer—Alice Munro for example—after a shocking and disappointing revelation.
We all draw a line somewhere. For some people, it’s sexual abuse (and its complicity). For some, it’s betrayal of children. For some, it’s racism (especially towards their own group). For some, it’s condonation of terrorism. For some, it’s denial of genocide. And so on and so forth. Certain things are more personal, certain things are felt more strongly.
For example, due to my background, I have no interest in writers who praise communism, or Vietnamese writers who live in Western countries but never say anything critical about the communist government.
If some people are no longer able to read Alice Munro, why condemn them? Nobody is obliged to read Alice Munro.
Separating the art from the artist is the ideal—we should appreciate the great works of art that very flawed people have nevertheless given us—but it’s not always possible and that’s fine.
The Time argument is the one that resonates with me most. We all have our principles, and the artist being "alive and being vile before [my] very eyes" against my principles feels like there's something ethical and pertinent at stake in my life RIGHT NOW, vs some dead and buried jew-hater or speech censor from over a hundred years ago. I still struggle with this, I see it as a shortcoming in me to be turned off by a contemporary artist's work just for what they claim they believe, but as you say, we all draw a line somewhere.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know what you mean.
DeleteI think people shouldn't be so harsh in condemning others for occasionally being unable to separate the two.
It's only the censorious puritans that I have problems with.
I didn't know that about Jackie Chan, what a dick. As the other commenter said, it's all about time and where you draw the line. I'm in the process of re-watching Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny And Alexander", it's an indisputable masterpiece, yet I can't help thinking about how he was a dick to Liv Ullmann when she was his wife. So he wasn't the best guy, but I think his art overpowers that. Eric Gill crosses the line for me, I can't help but think his work is beautiful, yet forever tainted.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I very much despise Jackie Chan.
DeleteAs for Ingmar Bergman, you can say that about most film directors, I think. So if you always think about how they treat actors or treat their spouses and family members, you wouldn't be able to watch anything.
My instinct on this is to be very hard-line. Putting gossip above art is the mark of a frivolous mind. By and large, anything we think we know about a great writer, most of whom are long dead, is uncertain, probably out of context, very provisional, and pretty uninteresting compared to the work. So why waste time and energy getting upset about it? It is basically gossip. Gossip is not a worthless activity, far from it, it is the way most of us express ourselves as moral beings most of the time, BUT when somebody has given us literature, which is a far more sophisticated way of exploring moral questions, why focus on gossip about their lives? It's the characters who matter. Gossip about the people we actually know - yes, all day. But people we've never met? Celebrity culture, surely. As opposed to characters in literature, whom we can actually get inside.
ReplyDeleteMy hard-line view is informed by a particular perspective. I know I am a deeply flawed human being. I EXPECT other people to be the same. Anybody who claims NOT to be a deeply flawed human being is either a liar, or so privileged they have never experienced any suffering (and I doubt any level of privilege can guarantee that), or basically has no soul. And is therefore unlikely to be a great writer. I do not feel entitled to judge another human being on limited information. The whole point of literature is to give us all the information we need to judge a character. Life cannot do that. I can have an opinion, I can't help having an opinion, but my opinion says at least as much about me as about the other person.
There is also a danger in conflating a person's moral standing with their political views. Most people of my generation had grandparents who were soft-soap racist at best. I deplore soft-soap or stronger racism, but my grandmother was emphatically NOT an evil person. Anybody who claimed she was, on the basis of her soft-soap racism, without ever even having met her, I would consider to be a moral cretin. I am sure we can all come up with similar examples. I struggle to accept that people who vote Conservative or who consider particular Middle Eastern people's lives to be worthless, both true of my grandmother, can be decent human beings, but I know from experience that many if not most of them are. Even Trump voters.
I do agree that if a writer's moral flaws as it were, infect their work, that is a problem. But that is a problem with the work. It is not the writer's moral flaws that are the problem. It is their WRITING.
I kind of feel I'm sounding rather dogmatic here. So okay, my Desert island Discs book would be Boswell's Life of Johnson. If it emerged - which it won't - that Johnson was a serial killer or child-rapist, should I still enjoy the book as much? Well of course not. The book would be woefully incomplete. And its favourable tone about Johnson would strike a discordant note. But if it emerged BOSWELL (who was bad enough anyway) was? Who cares? His love and admiration for Dr Johnson was the best thing about him. Having something good in you doesn't preclude having something bad in you, & vice versa. I suppose I'd find Boswell a less agreeable companion, but I think I'd gain, rather than losing, if I were able to put my reservations aside, enjoy the book, & appreciate what was good about Boswell. And I suppose that is my point.
Your comment is, just as you wrote in the email, annoying.
DeleteThere are 3 points here.
1/ My blog post was prompted by the discussion surrounding Alice Munro, and I can't help thinking that it's very offensive to use the word "gossip" when we're talking about a mother who chose her husband over her daughter after being told that the husband sexually abused the daughter, especially when that mother years later again chose the husband over the daughter's kids, i.e. her grandkids. It is vile, Hadrian.
I wrote my blog post because I find people sanctimonious if they expect great writers to be morally flawless human beings and try to cancel those who don't meet their moral standards, but also because I find the other extreme smug and self-satisfied, the ones who speak like they are so much more enlightened than anyone else because they only care about the art and don't care for, to use your word, gossip.
2/ My blog post has made an important point about time, so your point about Boswell is irrelevant.
3/ I know that there is a danger in conflating a person's moral standing with their political views. That however is not the case with Jackie Chan. He's a Hong Konger who became successful in Hong Kong and Hollywood, and yet he became the spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party and continually attacked Hong Kong, the US, and democracy.
That is not simply some political views.
I have tried to be as nuanced as I can about the subject of art vs artist, and explored different aspects, and you responded with something I found extremely condescending.
Okay, well that's me told. I clearly haven't communicated effectively. The last thing I would ever want, or frankly, dare to be, is condescending to you. You could not have picked a word better calculated to send shivers down my spine than "condescending". Brrr!
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was balanced, reasonable, thoughtful, and very well put, as so often. I am not trying to rubbish it or even argue against it. I simply wanted to say I take a hardline view and explain why, in a biographical rather than argumentative way, without giving away too many details of my crazy (past) life. That's all. In particular, I am extremely reluctant to judge my fellow human beings on the basis of things reported about them in the press. Other people seem to find this attitude intensely irritating, as you seem to, but I feel it is a bit of a stretch to describe it as "smug" or "self-satisfied", if that is what you are saying. It is precisely because I am NOT self-satisfied that I am reluctant to judge other people. I accept that the word "gossip" comes across as dismissive and therefore has an inflammatory effect, which I regret. I would gently push back though and ask how you know these things about Alice Munro, whom as I suspect you guess, I have barely heard of and have never read. I completely agree her behaviour sounds vile. But if it is simply a matter of reports about her private life in the press? She might have been mentally ill, she might have been in thrall to an abuser, there are all sorts of possible exculpatory, you know, things, we are not being told. Does that make sense? I don't have to judge her & nobody can make me. I can just enjoy the work, if I read it. I'm happy with that.
I appreciate I might be coming across as judgmental about people who are being judgmental. Not sure what to do about that, to be honest.
You make a good point about time, which my remarks about Boswell are basically supporting, which I should have made explicit. I am not trying to pick an argument, appearances notwithstanding.
Never heard of Jackie Chan, but again, would gently push back and say Hong Kong, the USA, and democracy are all eminently criticizable (which does NOT make the CCP any less horrible). I will happily provide copious critiques of each on request, but I am sure you can supply them yourself. From what you say, and I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong, the real problem with this person is not so much any particular political standpoint, more the fact that he is a traitor. Which nobody likes, for good reason, and which even I can judge. Even if I don't let it detract from my delight in P.G. Wodehouse....
Regarding Alice Munro, my point is simple and I have said it more than once: I do not care what people do with Alice Munro as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, like calling for censorship. If people want to read Alice Munro, that's fine, go ahead. If they find it impossible to continue reading her books, that's perfectly fine.
DeleteI've raised this issue because I can understand why some people find it hard to read her, now that the truth is out (the husband has admitted). There's also a debate about it because of the cover up by the publishing industry, including the biographer. I can see why people feel betrayed, especially when she wrote about love, relationships, and secrets. It's hard to read all that whilst being now aware of the choices she herself made.
As for Jackie Chan, I have nothing but contempt for sympathisers, traitors, and opportunists. He got the freedoms in Hong Kong, he got the freedoms in the US, but he called the US the most corrupt country in the world and said that democracy was not for Chinese people. He also said a lot of other things that you can easily google. East Asians despise Jackie Chan. It's not just because he's a traitor, but because he became a spokesperson for the Chinese communist party - I'm not any more fond of Chinese people in mainland China who act as propagandists for the communist party.
As for your point "She might have been mentally ill, she might have been in thrall to an abuser, there are all sorts of possible exculpatory, you know, things, we are not being told. Does that make sense?"
DeleteThere was a period, after and because I read Tolstoy, when I thought that way about people - I tried to have compassion for everyone and be forgiving, and accepted lots of things about people as long as they appeared good-natured. I'm no longer that way. I came to realise that, as I tried to have compassion and excuse people's behaviour and mistakes, I let them do to me lots of things I should not ever tolerate.
Am I harsh? Maybe. Am I judgemental? Sure.
But people make their choices.
As Vasily Grossman puts it in Life and Fate, what difference does it make whether a Nazi loved it or felt bad about it when he was participating in the Holocaust? He was doing it.
Although having said all that, what you have told me about Munro has been revolving around my mind and I am struggling not to be physically sick. So I see your point.
ReplyDeleteWhereas in 200 years' time I won't give a shit.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Alice Munro's story, "Wild Swans"?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure to what extent it bothers me when an artist turns out to have been flawed or even monstrous. Some of my favourite art was made my horrible people, including Nazis or sympathizers (Carl Orff, Knut Hamsun).
I actually met a Nazi once, a real one; she was very kind to me and let me stay in her home although she didn't know me at all (I vaguely knew her daughter and I needed a place to stay for the night). She was a bit of an apologist for Hitler, even; I stayed in her son's room and there was a copy of Mein Kampf on his bookshelf. It was very strange.
Somehow I've been able to separate out in my mind my repulsion for her ideas and my gratitude for the genuine kindness she showed me.
Some people are just very complex and hard to judge completely. I think it's okay to judge a person for particular actions they have done, as long as we have credible information about what those actions actually were. I'm a lot more hesitant to judge the whole person. The worst people in the world are still capable of doing things which positively affect others. If we erase such a person entirely, maybe we make the world a better place, but anyone who has benefited from that person will lose what they have been given.
I have another story, too. When I was young, my parents found out that the husband of a friend of theirs had been cheating on their friend for years. The guy had a whole relationship that the woman had never known about. She found out when he died; she found letters and so forth. I remember my father taking an extremely judgemental attitude towards the man. It was as if all of his opinions about the man were suddenly no longer valid and the man turned instantly from being someone that my parents liked to someone that they hated. But we never know much about what another person is like; whatever that person has given us, through their friendship or kindness or whatever, that has to have some meaning, doesn't it? It seems to me wrong to suddenly change our opinion on something because we find out some new information that we never had. Or maybe not wrong, but maybe just too quick, too quick of a change. What if someday we find some new information and it makes the situation more complex again, or it reverses something we've just learned? Do we have to swing back and forth loving and then hating someone because we see more of their true selves? I'm not being rhetorical; I don't know the answer. I think, though, that the art makes an impact on us when we are exposed to it, and once it impacts us, well, that impact in me is something that I want to keep, rather than having it easily exposed to further information as it comes available. I feel like I harm myself if I start swinging back and forth from one extreme opinion to another.
Scott
Also, nothing I wrote is meant to disagree with anything you wrote. I actually agree with pretty much your entire post. This is just my own thoughts based on some experiences I've had. I do take more extreme positions on some artists, but even then, I find it hard to judge because ultimately I know so very little about the person; I'm just hearing about them secondhand. And I tend to not idolize, so I don't feel personally betrayed when the person turns out to be horrible.
DeleteScott
Hi Scott,
DeleteSorry for the late response. I've been rather busy.
I haven't read "Wild Swans".
I know what you're saying, but I think one important point needs to be made: being a Nazi today, vile as it is, is very different from being a Nazi in Nazi Germany, when they had power and participated in or at least went along with monstrous acts.
It's precisely because of this reason that I do not forgive people who are communists today, as communist regimes still exist and they are still committing atrocities in their own countries and beyond their borders.
I also do not want to have much to do with writers who come from Vietnam and remain silent about the violations of freedoms and human rights in Vietnam. All these things are still going on, you cannot sweep them under the rug and then talk to me about art vs artist. That's a luxury I cannot afford, having been a political refugee myself.
In Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman has a chapter about Lenin, about the differences between the public Lenin and the private Lenin. I will say that I do not care how great Lenin was towards his family and friends. That too applies for communists and sympathisers today. I do not care how kind they are to their friends and colleagues; I do not care how good their music or books or paintings are; if they participate in the repression and oppression in Vietnam, I'm going to condemn them.
Everyone draws the line somewhere. That is my line.
Yes. I do condemn the woman, actually, but I find it complex and difficult to ignore her genuine kindness to me, because it was actually to me that she was kind (as opposed to my hearing about her kindness secondhand). She was a real Nazi, from Nazi Germany. An old woman by then, and this was in Maine and in the late 1980s. Of course, forty or fifty years earlier than that, our interactions would have been dramatically different.
DeleteIt's possible she wasn't an actual member of the Nazi party; I have no idea, but I don't see that it would matter. When someone tells you that Hilter wasn't that bad and is speaking from personal experience, they are Nazi enough. Also, her son (or maybe it was a grandson; I can't remember anymore) had a copy of Mein Kampf and various memorabilia in his room; the son was away (fortunately). I actually slept in the son's bed.
So, it was very strange. I can think of many people I condemn (today), without personally interacting with them, more than I condemned her at the time when I was actually interacting with her. It's a question of degree, maybe.
But I also think that there is so so so much art and literature that it costs us little to shut some of it out because it was made by horrible people. So yes, I agree with you; if someone wants to shut out Alice Munro, let them; who cares; they can read someone else. We get to make choices about what to let into our lives; the people telling other people that their choices are wrong are usually the problem.
I mentioned Wild Swans because it is a powerful and complex and disturbing story about sexual abuse. It's hard to understand how someone writes a story like that and then in any way enables or doesn't condemn sexual abuse. I think that most people who have read much Alice Munro have read that story or the stories which follow that same character, so that may account for some of the extreme reactions people are having.
Interestingly, something related to this is happening now, too, with J.D. Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy. I think the German publisher just dropped it.
In both cases, the difficulty for people is that they loved the stories first, and then found out about the person afterwards. They already invested in loving the book, and assumed that they loved the person who wrote the book, too. So the revelations are felt as a personal betrayal. It's much easier to condemn someone before you fall in love with something that they have created, than to fall in love with their art first and then realize that you hate the person.
This is why I prefer not to know much of anything about the authors of the books I love.
Anyway, thank you for listening.
I see.
DeleteI know a Vietnamese writer who still defends and speaks warmly of Hồ Chí Minh, because he knew him as a kid.
And yeah, that's a good point about personal betrayal.
I've been thinking about writing a blog post about my literary heroes. That might be an interesting subject for discussion.