Does discovering something despicable about an author destroy the value of all of that author's work

A comment on another thread about reading things through a filter if one found out that the author held a despicable view caused me to think about this.

I had just this experience in my early 20s when I bought a biography of Peter Sellars to give my father, who loved his movies. I read all the books I give as presents before I give them and I discovered to my dismay that Peter Sellars was not a very nice man at all. I decided not to give the book to my father, since I didn't know if it would affect his enjoyment of the actor's work.

For a while I found myself really conflicted about Peter Sellars and other people who had great gifts but weren't particularly good people in other aspects of their lives.

Over time, I've come to a place where I appreciate the things that people do well and dislike their flaws. It's a state of constant, though no longer distressing tension. I can applaud Sellars as a wonderfully funny actor and also despise the way he treated some of the people in his life.

So, what about you - are the works of an author (or actor, or singer or whatever) spoiled for you if they beat their spouse, or approved of slavery, or ate their peanut butter sandwiches with cucumber slices?

What level of contamination does it take to render an author's works utterly untouchable? What is tolerable? Who do you admire for one quality and despise for another?

This question often arises with respect to Martin Heidegger. As readers, we confront the text not the author. It can be taken on its own terms. On its own terms, a text may be considered contemptible (or not).

Well, Peanut butter and Cucumber consumers are a category all their own.

I try not to hear about the personal lives, actions, and opinions of authors, actors, or others that I enjoy because it does affect my enjoyment of their work if they are extremist in any way. I won't read Ender's Game, no matter how great the book is, because of the author's actions and opinions. My enjoyment of Road Warrior is now colored by Mel Gibson's hate rants.

While I don't expect the people who entertain me to be perfect, I do prefer that they not be involved in activities that involved hate, animal cruelty, child abuse.... and whatever the latest scandal is.

I think if you had titled this thread "Does discovering something despicable about an author destroy your enjoyment of all of that author's work" I could have answered yes. As it is, however, the most I can say is that sometimes -- not often, but sometimes -- my antipathy to a writer's real world life will interfere with my ability to appreciate their work, no matter how well-crafted or valuable or important it may be.

The work may stand alone, but I don't. I'm not made of stone...things affect me. I know I bring that stew of influences and impulses with me to any book I read.

It depends but short answer would be no. I know someone who met most of the Nouveau Roman authors--or those associated with that tag. She loved Pinget and Sarraute. Butor at least once stayed at her house. She couldn't stand the nobelist Claude Simon though. A mean despicable old man. Anyway Simon IMO was the best of the bunch--though Pinget's the Inquisitory is a masterpiece IMO.

This subject comes up often enough with the French writer Louis Ferdinand Celine who was known for his virulent anti-semitism. Some still see him as a Nazi collaborator during the second war. He was more a Nazi headache when they tried to get him to do anything actually for them. There was something deranged about Celine but he was a tremendously gifted writer. A head injury from the first world war probably didn't help his mental state. Journey to the end of the night may be the greatest French novel ever written. There are tons of writers that were influenced by him including many Jewish ones--like Philip Roth and Joseph Heller. The list goes on--definitely the Beats, Henry Miller idolized him, Charles Bukowski, Louis Paul Boon. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a forward for his Rigadoon and William Vollmann the forward for a newer edition of Journey.

People are not perfect.

Ezra Pound, Ernst Jünger, Knut Hamsun (Nobel Prize), Carl Schmitt, and Paul de Man also belong to the fascist and/or anti-semitic club. The translation of Jürgen Habermas' Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere into English was allegedly delayed for years because of his reliance on some of Schmitt's critical analyses of Liberalism.

I suppose it depends on the purpose of the work. If it's a work meant really as nothing more than entertainment, then I suppose it would destroy the value of the work because there's little chance I could enjoy it if I knew something horrible about the author. If it were a work that was meant for more than just entertainment, then such knowledge probably wouldn't affect the value of the work for me because the value of the work to me is based on my grappling with its lesson(s) and words rather than on how it makes me feel.

The actor-movie relationship is different, though, from the author-book relationship. It's much easier to separate in one's mind the author from the book because you don't have his or her face staring out at you as you read it. With a movie, you can't easily separate the actor as character in the film from the actor as a real person, at least if it's a very well-known actor, like Peter Sellers. So even a film that is meant as something more than pure entertainment might have its value diminished because of the constant intrusion of the actor as a real person into one's attempt to contend with what the film is trying to say.

Céline was wounded in the shoulder, not the head--more's the pity. He spread lies about that himself, like he lied about everything else, constantly, furiously, monstrously. He was a stomach-turning, conscience-less coward and cynic who successfully manipulated his insignificant soldiering and even less worthwhile medical practice (contrary to his later propaganda, most of the days he couldn't be bothered to let the patients in and abandoned playing at being a doctor to the poor soon enough--though not talking about it) into the image made on order to be lapped up by the disaffected and professional misanthropes, a peculiarly French brand of vicious anti-establishmentarian philosophers. France always has some public sinister kook with dirt under his fingernails vomiting onto people, especially the dickless classes--the female, Jewish, bourgeois, coloured, law-abiding, religious people. One can never go wrong being disgusting to these.

This sack of shit who produced tons of murderous antisemitic propaganda and took refuge with the Nazis he glorified like a paid arselicker, never showed an atom of regret nor any sign that his views and overall ideas for improving humanity (killing all the Jews was an excellent start in his opinion--I'm not summing up, it's in print) had changed. He refused to talk about what had happened to other people during the war and spoke only of himself, copiously and ceaselessly pitying himself.

A Holocaust survivor met with him and Céline wouldn't countenance what the person was telling him, instead switching the topic to how much HE had suffered.

This wasn't a one off. This was constant. This is what he was like. Listen to him pleading for himself, listen to his CONSTANT WHINING about his sad fate (at one point he actually says somewhere that NO ONE had suffered as much as he).

It is in his postwar fiction, it is in the many interviews and documentaries.

He wasn't the only literary collaborator, or psychotic antisemite, or a liar and a coward. He's certainly not the only morally ugly vile turd people still read (he's such a chic mankind-hating rebel--Henry Miller loved him! Heyyyy now--Henry Miller!)

But he is the only one I know who combined such ugliness with such complete absence of self-awareness and remorselessness. In that he resembles no other writer of great talent. (Hamsun, a better writer, was also a half-senile old man when he sold himself.)

#8--it's pretty much certain there was an untreated head injury. Battlefield hospitals on the front line were notorious for the quickest solution. They had to deal with casualties en masse. He was able to make the long walk to another hospital a lot further away from the lines or he would have lost his arm almost for sure. That was the immediate concern. Afterwards he was so fucked up--that the Army dumped him--for that to happen you had to be seriously fucked up. Henri Barbusse was practically 40 years old and got shot in the chest and went back to the front afterwards. He wrote Under Fire--a great book. For the rest of his life Celine could hardly sleep because of his head--he complains about it throughout his work--all the constant noises going off in his head--whistles, the Paris metro, etc. etc. He became a doctor and as his shoulder injury continued to debilitate he'd use morphine to knock down the pain just about every day. He was angry and at least somewhat deranged. Still a great writer IMO.

A polarizing figure in literature--is what he became. Personally I have more animosity towards Heidegger and Sartre. My biggest hatred though is reserved for Ayn Rand.

No, what is certain is that there was no head injury.

Céline was a bloody liar who obsessively manufactured and manipulated a slew of myths about himself. I saw three French documentaries about him going in detail about all the big whoppers, the stuff of his legend--the lie about the head injury--sorry, I'll take the medical record and professional opinion over his--the lie about selfless tending to the poor, the lie about giving medical consultation to Henry Ford's workers during a visit to the factory, lie upon lie.

The Army "dumped him"? How so, sez who? By November 1914 he was already hors de combat (but decorated!) and retired for good a little later, declared invalid.

Personally I have more animosity towards Heidegger and Sartre.

More animosity towards Sartre... compared to Céline, to the man whose racism and antisemitism was so radical it made Nazis uncomfortable? More animosity towards the man who refused on principle public honours, including the Nobel prize, than towards the author of Bagatelles for a massacre and The school of corpses?

Any fascist is better than any communist, eh?

You go your way, I'll go mine, and here's hoping they never cross.

Anyway, to bring it back to the OP, Céline is my limit case. He is the most important writer who was simultaneously an utterly despicable shit. What I know of Céline's person (and what I believe everyone who picks him up ought to know) greatly affects how I read him.

That I DO read him goes without saying, he is too important, if you care about either literature or politics or history, to sweep under the carpet.

But I spit on every single "five-star" rating he's given here. On principle.

Dumped--invalidated--there's not much difference. Definitive proof there was a head injury? We'd have to dig his body up. I've read numerous biographical works about him--pretty much all of his biographers agree--there was some head trauma. Frederic Vitoux translates lots of his letters home to his parents from that period. If there's a definitive biography it's his--though Patrick McCarthy's is very good as well.

Sartre wasn't a communist--he hung out with them--there is a difference. As well he seemed to enjoy piling on people the communist party targeted--such as Andre Gide--if I'm a fascist perhaps you'e anti-gay. I'm pretty sure neither is the case. I have no use for communism though that is true--socialism and anarchism are a little bit closer to how I think. All for the side of the Spanish Civil War republicans--like Buenaventura Durruti. There was one exception for Sartre to that that I know of--Paul Nizan who despite being a lifelong communist joined the French Army after the Germans attacked France and to the disapproval of Thorez--the leader of the communist party in France--that was before the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the communist party in France at that point was discouraging its members and friends from defending their country--being that Germany and the Soviet Union at that point were allies--if uneasy ones. Nizan joined the army anyway and was killed at Dunkirk. I've read a couple of his novels by the way. Later on--the communists in France pretty much blackened his name--but Sartre in that one instance that I know of--defended a former friend.

A further point Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, Allen Ginsberg, Saul Bellow all Jewish all talked about Celine. Some of them trying to work their way around some of the awful things he did say--because they saw him as a great writer--were inspired by him. Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs even went to the trouble of looking him up after the war. This is a quote from Roth--'To tell you the truth, in France Celine is my Proust! Now there is a very great writer. Celine is a great liberator. I feel called by his voice.' I've been a big fan of Philip Roth by the way for years and he doesn't write anything like Celine.

journey to the end of the night is one of the great novels of the 20th century

The Walser screed if even half right means nothing in regard to the novel. Still, it seems in life that the known human must be known. Yes, Heidegger was, but was his book? Yes, Sartre was, and as far as we know, worse than Celine in his day to day treatment of women--this part has nothing to do with commi versus fasci--but the books are all out there.

Henry Miller? The easiest cheap shot, yet who wrote the Tropics, Black Spring, Colossus of Maroussi, and innumerable letters AND who LIVED Dostoevsky...a tremendously generous fellow, an astonishingly offhand intellectual, great mind, great reader.

which leads to Blaise Cendrars: His (ENG. tr.) Lice, recalls some WWI Celine lit. His life was that of a warm and generous man and he wrote at least seven novels that should be in the top 50 to 150 of his century.

And then of course there is Rick Harsch. I am a writer. Because I have been translated into French and been taught in Tasmania and translated into Slovene I must be a big shot, no? But alas, I am not. So do my misdemeanors matter? Why not? Perhaps Walser can scan my ethical virtues to determine whether I am a worthy.

RE: Roth: Roth is a great voice writer--he gets into character and goes 500 pages. it's a talent, but it isn't Celine.

Knut: Sad case. His great works were half a lifetime behind him when he BEGAN to sour.

I'm aware of the way H.P. Lovecraft felt about people of other races, and it makes me feel a little gross when I read certain stories where you can imagine the horror themes representing his disgust for race mixing, etc. But I also know that racism was the attitude du jour, and that allows me to get past it to see the good qualities of his work.

I can't make the same excuse for Woody Allen, and I don't know if I'll be watching his movies again.

There is only one author I know of who was actually a better person than he appeared to be in his writing, and that's Samuel Johnson. Although he was a conservative, and appeared to be a snob, in real life he was a very kind hearted and charitable person (if his biographer James Boswell can be believed).

Most people have a skeleton of two in their closet, and I wouldn't stop reading a favourite author who did or said something stupid. A thoroughly despicable person, though, I might not read. And racist or misogynist views have a tendency to seep into an author's stories.

The reason we like authors are varied, and not rational. We can easily overlook the sins of some, but not others, depending on the way we see their sin, and the way we like their books.

Oh well. It is an interesting question though. I will never, for instance, buy another Mel Gibson movie (not that I own many) but I actually do own Birth of a Nation. Go figure.

>13 weener: Woody Allen was entirely innocent. Their are numerous public articles convincingly discussing the case that prove this. If you don't want to watch his movies simply because he had an an affair, then you probably can't watch many movies at all.

Mr Harsch, it's the allegations of child sexual abuse that are the tipping point. Dylan Farrow is convincing.

I think an even better case than Woody Allen is Roman Polanski -- a fugitive from justice who doped up an underaged girl in order to molest her, yet revered the world over as an auteur.

In regards to older authors, esp. from centuries ago, I think we must be careful not to fall into the trap of presentism. Otherwise, for example, we'd need to be knocking down all those monuments in Washington to the Founding, Slave-owning Fathers.

It provokes another question: for what prejudices and points of view will future generations censure us but to which we ourselves remain blissfully blind?

I would knock down every statue of a slave owner, no problem.

Dear RidgewayGirl,

I've read articles that are convincing. If you post what you posted I guess you feel what you have read is convincing. So, I think I have to alter my 16 to 'I believe Woody Allen was entirely innocent.'

In terms of the theme of this thread, the answer is quite simple: if something bothers you enough about a public figure, by all means boycott or whatever. #8 will probably not spend much time reading Celine. #18 probably seldom watches Chinatown. I come down differently. If they are guilty, or extraordinary shits, it matters to me if I already dislike their work. And of course there are cases when something repugnant in the person is carried over to the work--sexism, racism...But even then, repugnant ideas can fascinate.

Mr Harsch, here's all I read. The last article is Allen's response, which, strangely enough, is what convinced me that something happened. Or Allen is too old to be able to craft a coherent argument. In any case, I'm not claiming to know the truth of the matter.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?_p...

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/woody-allen-speaks-out.html

I've been thinking over this, and I think that whether a writer's misdeeds affects my interest in their books depends on time and on how much I liked their writing before I learned about their misdeeds. So I'll ignore Dickens being a skeevy git because he's been dead a long time and I love his books. And I'll never read Roth again. Of course, even if Roth was as nice as Fred Rogers, I still wouldn't read anything else by him, having hated all three of the books of his I've read. The Human Stain is the Ishtar of the literary world, only stupider.

Strange the way we read things. I imagine a presupposition in both our cases, but who knows? I found Dylan unconvincing and Allen convincing. I had not seen the Vanity Fair piece, but had read Allen's which I found believable. The point about the lie detector is the only one I now anything about. It is implied that Allen snuck in a lie detector that was rigged or some such. What actually happens in these cases is simple: a licensed lie detector adminstrant examines the person. If he passes, they go public. If he fails, they shut their mouths.

It would be nice if creative works (of any and all types), along with scientific advances, only came from wonderful, sympathetic human beings.

But that's not how it works.

And the reverse is true, some really awful stuff comes from very pleasant people personally.

So yes, I try my best to separate the creation from the creator.

>1 Helcura: So, what about you - are the works of an author (or actor, or singer or whatever) spoiled for you if they (etc.)...?

I'm wary of works by authors with unsound politics; but for living authors, I draw a much firmer line in the sand.

e.g., H.P. Lovecraft is pretty much beyond my censure at this point; but Orson Scott Card? He won't get another dime from me.

>24 AsYouKnow_Bob:

You make a good point - supporting a despicable person economically by purchasing their work is a kind of active approval. It's so much easier if the person is dead and you're not going to change anything by reading or enjoying their work.

Would you pirate Card's works, or buy them used, or check them out of the library?

I have a quite a tension with Card, as some of his early works really made me think and I really liked them, but I agree, I would feel uncomfortable giving him money - it hasn't been a big challenge because I haven't really been reading Card lately, and so haven't bought any of his books.

>25 Helcura: Would you pirate Card's works, or buy them used, or check them out of the library?

When the world was young, I think I bought a (new) book or three by Card. (He doesn't directly benefit from my buying used books, or from my reading his stuff out of the library. And me? I'm not big on eBooks, so I'm not big on piracy; 'piracy' doesn't even really rise to the level of being a realistic option for me.)

But as Card moved crazy-ward, I've moved toward consciously avoided buying his stuff. And I sure as hell wasn't going to pay money to see the Ender's Game movie.

(Edited to add): Yeah, I checked my catalog: I've sent no money to Card in this century.

>24 AsYouKnow_Bob:

I would agree that living authors present a special dilemma, but just being dead or old doesn't make it simple.

The Bible is ancient but it actively upsets me because it buttresses so much of society and culture.

Thinking about this, I find I have no "rules". It's all individual and context-dependent. If I were persuaded that Polanski, for instance, is a paedophile, that would lead me to think badly of him but not of his movies. If he'd fucked a kindergarten, that would not make "Knife in the water" a less excellent movie. But then, the ones I saw, to the best of my recollection, had nothing to do with children.

That is, it is important how much life and work are intertwined, in what way, is the work supposed to say something meaningful about the author's views or is all "just art". It disgusts me that a murderous swine like Céline, who was looking forward to the Fourth Reich with all its carnage IN REAL LIFE, is being held up as a pacifist on the basis of his novels. Whereas something like Roth's misogyny is at least honest--he never pretended nor will begin now that women were anything but sex objects and figurative punching bags to him. I read The professor of desire in my teens and loved it; Portnoy's complaint in my twenties and loved it too. But I was then under the delusion that women and men are comrades in nature, that boy Portnoy fucking a raw liver in masturbatory frenzy would understand girl me crawling under tabourets to simulate weight on top while similarly engaged. I understood him. Mon semblable, mon frère.

Turns out men--Roth anyway--do not readily allow women are like them: people.

(oooooops--NOT ALL MEN!)

So, anyway, as I've come to disdain Roth the man (and disliking some recent books of his), I won't be rereading the ones I liked. I prefer the memories.

Leni Riefenstahl shot a movie during WWII using Gypsy extras, including children, who were then executed in Auschwitz. She claimed not to have known this was to be their fate, although she personally picked them inside a not wildly dissimilar concentration camp. Watching this movie (released in the guise of a "new" production in the 1950s), you are watching people and children dancing, playacting in costume, who have been taken from a prison and then sent into ovens.

If you didn't know this, you would probably find the movie very good and the actors delightful.

It isn't that the movie somehow becomes bad and the actors sad, when you have the knowledge of the circumstances. It is that the two thoughts, two feelings, two experiences are mutually annihilating, and this tension can be unbearable.

>27 LolaWalser: I would agree that living authors present a special dilemma, but just being dead or old doesn't make it simple.

Yeah, I get that. But at least the dead writers aren't going to be using my money to actively work for evil.

(I have enough to read that the more problematic stuff never gets to the top of my TBR stack anyway.... )

>23 BruceCoulson: : "And the reverse is true, some really awful stuff comes from very pleasant people personally."

That's a good and relevant point: shirking from competent work by an unpleasant author is the mirror image of squirming in front of your sweet old friend's cruddy watercolors and racking your brain for something nice to say.

Anyway all the books were in Babel's lirary first. Does whoever plagiarized them first matter ?

To me it is always repugnant to try to damage someone economically. To be disgusted by an artist and simply not purchase for that reason is part of the quotidian economic dance, but it's ugly to openly consider damaging someone economically.

>27 LolaWalser: I would agree that living authors present a special dilemma

For one thing, living authors keep talking. At least the voices of the dead ones are silent, and you only have to contend with what they've left behind.

Thinking about this, I find I have no "rules". It's all individual and context-dependent.

I think this must be true for everyone, really. Last year I went with a friend to see an art exhibit of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's work, and the two of us came away from the experience with completely different results. I was wowed and energized, but my friend, who is fairly traditional, was filled with disappointment after seeing the blatantly non-traditional relationship the two had. She couldn't get past the fact that they each openly had lovers. It literally spoiled her pleasure in Rivera's paintings. (Kahlo's made her uncomfortable for entirely different reasons).

I was so surprised at her response, since in my mind that intense relationship had fueled so much of what we were looking at on the walls of the gallery. But to this day if you ask my friend if she likes Kahlo or Rivera's art, she'll say no. And it's entirely because she didn't like the people she discovered them to be.

>31 southernbooklady:

It could be a matter of degree (just how much one hates/is upset by something?), but in general I don't think any knowledge about a painter (many of whom were magisterial arseholes) could damn the art, in itself. Well, you know--unless they painted literally in blood of babies and widows' tears.

That said, I am very glad Hitler's watercolours suck incredibly.

>32 LolaWalser: many of whom were magisterial arseholes

Being female, I'm well-practiced at setting aside the general asshattery of male writers and artists. Otherwise I'd never pick up another book or walk into another museum.

I don't know. A world in which Hitler was remembered for being a pretty good artist whose merits we would debate here -- as to whether his anti-semitism and general repugnancy made his art less compelling would be a good thing.

>34 RidgewayGirl:

No doubt, if professional frustration was all it took to create him.

But things being as they are, I'm happy to be given little to no reason to like anything about the man.

>33 southernbooklady:

Ha, indeed!

I think contrary to some of what was posted above, that for a fictional author that I read for enjoyment I'm probably more or less blind to their sins. I don't research authors, I just buy their books and read them. Occasionally someone like Card gets shouted about enough times that I'm vaguely aware, and probably won't deliberately buy their books - but then I've already read the ones I'm interested in reading.

For no-fiction though the author's reputation is more important. Their biases and logic processes are vital in creating a believable work, and if there past indicates that they hold views vastly dissimilar to mine in politics or social mores, than why should I believe their opinion in the topic of interest? Of course experts in one field doesn't make their opinions in another particularly relevant, but I suspect given the number of available expert opinions, I'd choose another. However I don't read that much non-fiction.

Art would very much lie with fiction reading - I'd be more interested in the appeal (or not) to me, than the actions of the artist who created it. Although probably best if it wasn't painted and sculpted with unicorn blood and dolphin tears.

>30 RickHarsch: To me it is always repugnant to try to damage someone economically. To be disgusted by an artist and simply not purchase for that reason is part of the quotidian economic dance, but it's ugly to openly consider damaging someone economically.

That seems like an odd way of framing the question. There are literally billions of people to whom I don't give any money. Am I "damaging" each of them by depriving them of my custom?

If I add some particular asshat to the relatively short list of "People I'd rather not contribute money to", that's "ugly"?

Am I allowed to decide that perhaps it's their espoused opinions (and actions!) that are "ugly"? Am I allowed to take this into account when planning my spending?

>37 AsYouKnow_Bob:: not ugly, bourgeois. (a middle class high five, here: you tell 'em, AYK_B!)

No one can decide to buy every book. When you decide to buy one book you're pretty much choosing it over so many millions of others. An individual decides this instead of that. It's perfectly legitimate to decide--as much as I've enjoyed blah, blah, blahs work I really don't like the guy for blah, blah, blah reason(s) and it's all over for me and blah, blah, blah. Expecting everybody to subscribe to your set of standards that's another thing. The Catalonian writer Vazquez Montalban's private detective character Pepe Carvalho--former communist, former CIA, former prison inmate--often would warm himself in front of the fire by burning books of writers he deemed overrated. In those crime novels Pepe has a very large library and not all books are invaluable possessions to him. I've wrote this before here--on the subject of book burning--and some are aghast at the idea of somebody even doing it in private. As Pepe does it it's not like some group think thing to rid the world of so and so's written word. So I can only say if you don't want to read something--well don't. If you don't want to buy something--don't. If you want to destroy something you own--go ahead. You don't need the approval of others to do any of that.

FWIW I'll detail how I happened to start reading Celine--since it bothers some people. I was only an occasional reader until I came out of the coast guard when I was 27. I was a punk rocker all the way. Still am. I have tons of albums going back into the late 70's and early 80's but there were a few bands that I really liked that predated punk--like the Velvet Underground but....also the Doors. There was a short period of unemployment after my enlistment and I started reading and one of the things I read was the No one here gets out alive biography of Jim Morrison--which details much of Morrison's reading matter and Morrison's Soul Kitchen was inspired by Kerouac and Break on through--by Gide and Huxley and Blake and LA woman by John Rechy and on and on. There was also the Doors song End of the night which was inspired by Celine's Journey. I pretty much started checking out all the stuff mentioned that he read. This is what kicked everything off for me--as far as becoming someone who is always reading something. This is where I really got the taste for it. Most of us I'm assuming had to start somewhere. This is pretty much where I started. So to quote Cobain--All apologies.

>39 lriley:

lriley, in no way does it bother me that people read Céline. I read Céline--chances are I've read more than most of his fans. If anything, I'd be inclined to urge people to read more of what he'd written--to read it ALL.

What bothers me is that this war criminal is sold as "cool" to idiot hipsters and poseurs, that he is misrepresented as this great "hater" of war--when he merely hated people--that explicitly destructive, murderous misanthropy like his is presented as something understandable, justifiable and admirable. Well, yes, if more people were like HIM, one could perhaps condone it.

Sometimes it is simply necessary to separate the artist from the art. Here, I will go beyond books. Will people stop watching John Wayne because he was very active in ferreting out left leaning artists in 1950's Hollywood? Would you have to stop going to Disneyland owing to Walt Disney's questionable politics and activism? Stop listening to Elton John because he is gay? Carl Orff for his affiliation with national socialism? Stop watching baseball because of the likes of Ty Cobb? Basketball because of Donald Sterling? Snoop Dog because of an alleged homicide charge?

What I am really getting at here is that you will find that a large percentage of artists --and writers, for that matter-- whose personal lives, politics and personalities will not mesh with the expectations of their readers.

I know this sounds strange and is simply not feasible for certain readers, but in the end the book, song, movie should stand on its own.

My father gave me great advice once. He told me never to find out too much about an author, director, actor, or musician I like. Because I will invariably find out something about that person that I don't like and it will spoil their work for me.

This is why I never read interviews or memoirs.

Once you do find out that distasteful thing, you can't unlearn it. I think whether it turns you off of the person's work is an individual thing and can't be predicted. Chinatown is one of the best movies ever made, and I still think Roman Polanski is a {expletive deleted}. I want to continue watching Chinatown, but I don't want to see any other Roman Polanski movies. Chinatown stands on its own, because I first saw it before I knew anything about Polanski, but I can't judge anything by Polanski now without it being colored by what I know about him. Similar situation with Orson Scott Card and Ender's Game.

It's a gut thing, not a head thing. I don't think I'm going to be able to enjoy Woody Allen movies any more. I just can't stomach them. It's annoying when that happens and then people say, well, you shouldn't watch any movies or read books or listen to music by anyone unless you know that they are perfect people! It's not that I set out to boycott these people for whatever reason. It's that what I've learned about them has spoiled the experience of enjoying their art.

Ignorance is bliss, in this case.

>42 sturlington: This is why I never read interviews or memoirs.

Or biographies?

If you are interested in the creative process at all, it seems impossible to be wholly blind to the person behind the work. Mostly, I've found knowing more about the author enhances my experience of the work. But occasionally such knowledge sours it. It is a risk the curious mind takes.

>43 southernbooklady: Yes, although I lie. I do read them occasionally when I am particularly interested in the person. But as a general rule, I avoid them. Of course, most of this distasteful knowledge I come by inadvertently, from the news.

ETA Hitchcock is a prime example. I know just a tiny bit about him and I do not want to know any more. Full stop. I don't think anything about his attitude toward women is settled fact, but I just don't want to know anything, because I love his movies so much.

>44 sturlington:

What about Marnie?

>45 LolaWalser: You know, I haven't actually watched Marnie, perhaps for the same reason. Shall I watch it and report back whether my opinion of Hitchcock has changed?

>46 sturlington:

Ha! Well, I don't want to spoil it for you... but (I too am a Hitchcock fan), I think you ought to see it, for research purposes and historical interest. :) Also, Sean Connery's very hot in it (nor is that a random point--that's why we're supposed to go along with the story) and Tippi Hedren's quite good.

I saw it first (like so many things) way too early (13-14?), during a Hitchcock retrospective on TV. I thought the relationship was giddily romantic. Picture my surprise when I re-watched it twenty years later...

as you know, bob: it's the way it was framed that made me frame the framus...

In a slightly similar vein, what happens when someone you respect, who is doing very good work, turns out to be...well less respectable than you thought they were? Salon recently ran an article on Somaly Mam, who has crusaded against human slavery. She is joined in that by Nicholas Kristof. I read Kristof's stories on human trafficking and was moved to at least donate something to the cause. Now it turns out the cause, while still an issue, is not being handled well by its handlers.

Sigh.

Here is the article.

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/28/heres_why_it_matters_when_a_human_rights_crusade...

>38 enevada: ,
>48 RickHarsch:

Guess I need to get my Snark Detector recalibrated... because I seem to be not understanding something.

(e? Could you maybe unpack that #38 a bit for me?)

Speaking of 'Hitler the artist' reminded me of this: one of the Serbian leaders in the 1990s, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, was also a well-regarded poet, but he went on to commit atrocities in the war. He was convicted of war crimes. Then, in 2005, he published a book of 'new' poems. PEN condemned their publication:

www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/15/pen-poetry-karadzic‎

I think it's fair, because he is using his notoriety to sell his book. In a sense, he is profiting from his crimes.

I am reminded of Hamlet's retort to Polonius: "God's bodkin, man, ... use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?"

Fortunately, I detest Richard Wagner's music so I can freely detest him as well without suffering any conflict.

But my lived experience offers no hint I should expect that real life would create any correspondence between paragons of humanity and paragons of art.

But the animosity in this thread towards Orson Scott Card interests me. Ender's Game was initially a great read 25 years ago; I followed up with a couple of novellas? short stories? about boy singers that evoked the magic of music most effectively. But ... I became very uncomfortable with the recurring framework in his fiction that I feel valorizes or romanticizes child abuse.

At the time I didn't see commentators or reviewers making this point, and I stopped reading him or paying any attention to him. Is this what people are objecting to, or are there other issues?

As you know, Bob: After your response to mine I realized if I continued making the tiny tiny point I wanted to make it would be getting much smaller and farther from relevant.

>49 Arctic-Stranger: That article reminds me of Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit, concerning Greg Mortenson and his humanitarian foundation. And then the obscene salaries at the American non-profit Upward Sports, which is a Christian version of Little League.

>50 AsYouKnow_Bob:: my point is also a pin prick - small minds think alike? But, anyhow, I wasn't being snarky just trying to be accurate and I think bourgeois is apt because you are using a convention of economics (material value, specifically that of the middle class) to register your disapproval of what you call another's "unsound politics" - that is, their political conclusions that are different from your own. It reads as though you are using your (hard-earned?) money to reward/punish other people for thinking differently from you - a boycott mentality. To me this seems to suggest a very bourgeois mindset where one's possessions - one's consumer choices - serve as ethical proxies for moral conformity.

(cf. to Lola's nihilism/anarchism - again, symbolic, because I don't believe she ever has, in fact, knocked over a statue, but I may be wrong here - in #19)

>55 enevada: To me this seems to suggest a very bourgeois mindset where one's possessions - one's consumer choices - serve as ethical proxies for moral conformity.

Is this not the foundation of capitalism? That we spend money on that which we value? Doesn't that make boycotts a valid expression of our ethical position?

#40--FWIW I'm an english reader pretty much only. I can read spanish a bit. The three pamphlets that Celine wrote--the first two prior to Germany's invasion of France and the third right after Germany's annexation of France I've only read short excerpts of--more or less bits and pieces cited in biographical works--these works of his are the ones that caused all the controversy pretty much and they've never been translated into English. To go further I certainly haven't turned him into some kind of hero--and actually I don't think I have any heroes. People are almost without exception flawed. It is part of what makes everyone different and even sometimes unique from each other. In a sense I prefer Louis Paul Boon who writes in a style very reminiscent of Celine but from an almost left wing anarchistic point of view. Unfortunately there's not all that much of that good Belgian in translation. But anyway there is very little if any racism in Celine's Journey (other than the mocking of the protagonists father's anti-semitism), Death on the Installment Plan or Guignol's band. Even Trotsky reviewed Journey and thought it was a great work. As far as the French--Celine is one one of the best writers IMO. There are others I'd rank as high such as Raymond Queneau, J. M. G. Le Clezio, Emile Zola, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Dominique Manotti etc. etc.

>56 southernbooklady:: Is this not the foundation of capitalism?

Capitalism is an economic system, not a moral system. Boycotts monetize ethics - is that valid? Ethically, I would say, no. Is it bourgeois? Yes.

>58 enevada: Boycotts monetize ethics - is that valid? Ethically, I would say, no.

Why not? Isn't spending an action? And aren't actions subject to ethical considerations and motivations? Why do you think money is somehow untouched by any ethical construct?

And since the Supreme Court has decided that money=speech, deciding how to spend one's money is a political act.

>59 southernbooklady:: Oh, I don’t think it is untouched by ethical consideration, rather I see the reverse that people feel morally complacent when they let their money “talk”. I think that is morally dubious. For example: contributing to a charity of my choice doesn’t make me an ethical/moral person. I may contribute because of my ethics/ morality but the action is a consequence and not a contributing factor.

Does that make any sense? It is probably only a difference of degree – but a difference I consider important.

>60 RidgewayGirl:: I am equally - well, perhaps even more so, suspect of people who conflate politics with morality (I am a good person because I vote (insert party here) ). Yikes.

But, yes, in a capitalist democracy money is, indeed, speech and the spending of it is expression. What this has to do with morality escapes me.

>61 enevada:

If I may: RG didn't mention "morality" at all (she called spending money a political act), and SBL wrote about "ethical" considerations.

On knocking down statues... I do like me some hyperbole, I thought that was CK by now. In sober mathematical fact, I hope no one would engage me and my little hammer alone to do the work (was it in Iraq that a crowd ran into some wee trouble when they zealously attacked a gigantic Dear Leader monument with bare hands and had to schedule days of removal by crane?) but it's also true that I have no objection whatsoever to removing statues of slave-owners and would support that removal by a variety of actions (none terrorist--too much expense for too little payoff).

There's, of course, the detail where my political scope, such as it is, ends at the border, but I can still wonder: what exactly is the problem in the great southern republic with removal of such compromising monuments?

A little too in love with our Fathers, are we?

The person being an irredeemable fucktard doesn't negate the value of their work for me, although it does add baggage. I just buy their stuff second-hand so I don't give them any money for it.

>62 LolaWalser:: I think pulling down statues is just a little too...commie for those of us below the 49th...

The fathers dressed in togas always make me squirm a bit - but leave 'em up, monuments to our great love of all things propaganda.

>52 librorumamans: "Is this what people are objecting to, or are there other issues?"

I think they object to the fact that as the nation has radically changed its views on gay rights, Card hasn't radically changed his to match.

>64 enevada:

Oh, pulling statues up and down, changing street and name places has a long and venerable tradition across systems...

Truth be told, the US is a place where, freely roaming, I'd statistically expect to run into something like the World's Biggest Ball of Yarn a hundred times more often than into bronze Jefferson.

>67 LolaWalser:: You've got the cultural statistics down: There's a guy in my neighborhood that drives around with a big ball of hay on his car.

(All of the bronzed assholes -Victorians, mostly - are frozen in perpetuity down in the boneyard).

>68 enevada:

...drives around with a big ball of hay on his car.

Oh, ha. One fears to ask... but my imagination already went places. (Enviromentally-sound Astroturf? Horse magnet? Protection from hail? Applied Dada? Conversation piece? Because he can?)

>69 LolaWalser:: conversation piece - a riff on Steinbeck's Travels With Charley:

http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index.php/newsx/local-news/7444-hay-ball-less-tha...

Look, I know you understand all about long winters, and this sort of thing has its own cheery quirk to it. Why not?

"It is sort of a gauge of different communities," he noted, saying that how communities react to the art piece gives him an idea of whether he would want to live there.

Dude is astute. I swear I'm going to try something like this for my next move!

>71 LolaWalser:: Excellent. Let us know when the kickstarter launch happens...

>61 enevada: I see the reverse that people feel morally complacent when they let their money “talk”.

Well, as Lola pointed out, I was asking about ethical acts, not moral ones. I agree there is a certain kind of complacency in sending money to Save the Children that does not approach the commitment of volunteering at a homeless shelter or for Doctors Without Borders.

Likewise, I don't see how purchasing one brand or not purchasing another is a substitute for a serious commitment to a particular ethical standard. (Much like putting a "Peace" bumper sticker on your car does little to promote actual peace, and a "God Bless America" one does almost nothing to prove your patriotism).

But boycotts have the potential to take that minimal level of acknowledgement and amp it up to a real commitment. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not about "letting money talk." It demanded a real sacrifice from its participants. That's free speech in an action and an active application of ethics right there.

(Also, speaking as someone heavily involved in a nonprofit arts organization, I'm not going to dismiss the checks people send us to support our cause and demand they do something "real" for the arts!)

>52 librorumamans: Card has publicly opposed same-sex marriage and has even advocated at times that homosexuality itself be illegal. You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Opinion

In my opinion, as Card's views became more conservative, his books became less readable. Even if his stance on homosexuality didn't bother me, I don't particularly find him interesting as a writer anymore.

>66 SomeGuyInVirginia: The lack of originality and wit of people who use the 'word' "fucktard" prevents me from taking what they write seriously.

>63 SomeGuyInVirginia: Aw shit, this one is so stupid I have to respond. As a writer, I have to tell you that every book sold used benefits me economically. Figure it out.

>76 RickHarsch: at 8% royalties?

>65 cpg: & >74 sturlington:

Thanks for the follow-ups. I'd heard vaguely of Card's homo­phobia. But since it comes without threats of violence or incarceration it strikes me as pretty conventional right-wing blather. As I said earlier, the way his writing tends to be structured around the abuse of children disturbs me far more.

>79 librorumamans: Thanks for the follow-ups. I'd heard vaguely of Card's homo­phobia

He has also linked homosexuality with pedophilia and sexual abuse.

Card lives in my state, and was publicly active in supporting Amendment One, which amended our State Constitution to define marriage specifically as between one man and one woman....in effect making same sex marriage illegal. (It already was, but this was an extra level of legal weight to any attempt to address or change the situation legislatively).

Since his personal politics ran counter to mine on an issue that directly affected my civil rights, I found I couldn't ignore them enough to enjoy his books.

His views on homosexuality were public enough and controversial enough that when DC Comics tapped him to write one of the Superman comics there was a public outcry and some stores announced they wouldn't stock the book. (A boycott!) DC eventually put the project on indefinite hold.

>80 southernbooklady: Okay, the specious and malicious conflation of homo­sexuality and pedo­philia shifts this into bigotry from just a differing point of view.

The nexus of this false concern with pedo­philia and an arguably positive attitude towards abusive child–rearing suggests something interesting going on under the hood, n'est-çe pas?

>81 librorumamans: suggests something interesting going on under the hood, n'est-çe pas?

Since I tend to get irritated when people try to psychoanalyze me from afar, I try to avoid doing it myself. But then, there's nothing under Mr. Card's hood that would interest me anyway. :-)

No royalties on used books, sir or madam. Conundrum persists.

imho, abandoning creative works because you disapprove of the author/composer/artist/etc. is akin to rejecting children of despicable parents.

Cute analogy, but rather facile. Somehow, I think such creative works will be indifferent to my antipathy for their authors.

>18 nathanielcampbell: I think an even better case than Woody Allen is Roman Polanski
>24 AsYouKnow_Bob: I'm wary of works by authors with unsound politics; but for living authors, I draw a much firmer line in the sand.

Card I won't read because his beliefs color his books, and it's hard to separate who he is from his books. I probably wouldn't care so much if he wasn't writing such philosophical books. There are a couple Polanski movies I might pick up after he dies or preferably after he voluntarily returns to serve his sentence.

On the other hand, I've heard some things about Anne McCaffery, but I'm not going to make a big deal about an old women having some ideas that are out of tune with the times, especially when they're just things she comes up with interviews and not pushing politically.

84/85 i think it's a good analogy except that the children remain innocent to a point--creative works can be tarred by the author's worldview. if not, as in the case of journey to the end of the night, then it is still a good kid

#85

They will; but you may be missing out on a wonderful companion because you hate what the parent(s) said, or did. It's not a question of how the works will feel; it's a matter of judging a creative work not on its own merits, but the actions and speech of its creator/parent.

>88 BruceCoulson: you may be missing out on a wonderful companion because you hate what the parent(s) said, or did

Which is my prerogative, of course. Besides, it's not like I come to any book or creative work as a blank slate. Who does? We all have our priorities and hot button issues.

But it usually isn't either/or. In fact, I'd say it is rare I'll let a book be ruined by its author. I'm female, after all. As I mentioned above, if I was going to reject books because their authors were male chauvanistic misogynist assholes, I'd never read anything. Believe me, I excel at ignoring the crap that writers can spew.

But where I decide not to, I don't feel inclined to apologize for it.

I'm not saying that you should. Or that yours (or any of our) choices stem from a blank slate; I tend to buy authors whose works I've enjoyed previously, as a benign example. (e.g. The chief reason I won't read anything more by Ayn Rand is not that she was a horrible person; it's that her books were excreable.)

But in an answer to the OP, for me it does not.

Well most of my "heroes" have been "cowboys" -- er MOVIE cowboys and most of them have been Republicans but it doesn't make their work less good.

Per Woody Allen I don't know but I did hear (on the radio) Diane Keaton say simply "Woody is my friend -- I believe Woody." Since I have no personal relationship with Allen I reiterate "I don't know" but his work has value no matter what terrible impulse he MAY have succumbed to.

I have to say that Leni Riefenstahl was a great filmmaker no matter what she "celebrated" was Fascism with a Capital F: "Triumph of the Will" is a work of art albeit an admittedly perverse one...

"Riefenstahl was a great filmmaker. . ." (91)

A question raised by this thread: Are filmmakers and
writers comparable in a topic like this? And if so, were Riefenstahl - - and the highly touted
director of Birth of a Nation
as good filmmakers* as Pound was a poet/critic? Also, are the "rules"
relaxed for filmmakers? Do, e.g., Pound and Celine get
judged more severely?

*leaving Woody Allen aside,because Iʻm not convinced of his "value",
but I havenʻt seen enough of his work to be a critic.

>92 rolandperkins: And if so, were Riefenstahl - - and the highly touted director of Birth of a Nation as good filmmakers* as Pound was a poet/critic?

The Last of the Nuba is generally taken as Riefenstahl's rehabilitation. I don't understand how D. W. Griffith saw The Birth of a Nation, but his next film was Intolerance as a response to critics of The Birth of a Nation. I don't know much more about the subject, but the fact that Griffith was listening and responding means something.

I've always heard it said that Edna St. Vincent Millay got judged harder for The Murder of Lidice then Pound got judged for his pro-Nazi work. I've read one professor who said that Pound's late work was truly great and that he would encourage no one to read it and that he regretted the way his chosen field forced him to study it so deeply.

I'd also note there's a big distinction between Griffith and Riefenstahl one hand and Celine and Woody Allen and Polanski on the other, in that the complaint about the first pair rests solidly in their work, and the latter in their personal actions.

>91 Michael_Welch:

I have to say that Leni Riefenstahl was a great filmmaker no matter what she "celebrated" was Fascism with a Capital F: "Triumph of the Will" is a work of art albeit an admittedly perverse one...

It's very effective propaganda and advertising; critical opinion is divided on both the "art" therein and Riefenstahl's talent. A comparison to the Soviet cinema and, say, Busby Berkeley's musical extravaganzas might help recalibrate her achievement.

As for "perverse", I don't get it, unless anything featuring Germans in uniform heiling in unison is by definition taken to be perverse.

>93 prosfilaes:

The Last of the Nuba is generally taken as Riefenstahl's rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation from what by whom? She's not the only old Nazisoid who went for racist anthropology after the war but she is the one most famously criticised for it. A sensitive multiculturalist she did not, somehow, manage to become. She regarded the Nuba as gorgeous animals, superior only in adaptation to their environment (see interviews in documentary "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl").

Related to the topic, German media and Nazism, I was just depressed by the news (a month old) that Horst Tappert, one of the most beloved German TV actors, famous beyond Germany for playing Inspector Derrick in the series of that name, had been in the SS during the last two years of the war (in his early twenties).

There is so little German film and Germany on film I can bear to watch and, while not exactly a huge fave, Derrick was such a nice, attractively civilized, moral persona. And now this. You too are a brute?

Purchasing power and ethics.

Of course it's a stance - the little person's sole option against corporate behemoths, I choose to spend my money elsewhere. It's not a big stance, it's not a lifelong crusade against that injustice, but it is a valid action. Will a company notice if I don't buy their goods. Maybe not. But a franchise certainly notices when the suburb doesn't want them there. It doesn't take that many people to make a difference, and if that many people don't agree with you, maybe you're wrong anyway. SO are artists at the same level as a corporation? Maybe. I could write to them and say you're wrong, here's the evidence why. Possibly they'd receive my letter, maybe they'd read it, perhaps my evidence would persuade them, we could have a postal discussion over the matter. Or I could just buy someone else's book. It would be as good, probably. Of course if they don't know about my boycott I've achieved nothing, but that's always the case.

Celebrating nazism in any way appears to me to be "perverse" albeit in this case, "Triumph of the Will," it was done artfully, i. e., a true cinematic talent did it.

I recently wrote about a book which was not "artful" about the famous movie actor and American icon John Wayne. I find much of Wayne's political attitudes, well, "unhealthy" but I can't help but recall the critic-director Peter Bogdanovich remarking on the first time he met Wayne, on the set of Howard Hawks' "El Dorado" (released in 1967).

Bogdanovich noted how exuberant Wayne was, how he hung around even if he had no scenes and how everyone seemed to enjoy his presence. PB likened JW to "a ten year old boy" having great fun doing exactly what he wants to do.

Wayne took Bogdanovich to his trailer and talked with him for about an hour about his films and experiences making movies and when PB thanked him at the end Wayne said he really enjoyed "talkin' about pictures; everybody talks to me about politics an' cancer!"

THAT's the John Wayne I love...

You did a lot of "work" there hmm...

>97 Jesusak: Are you saying that Universal is what ultimately destroys the value of an artist's work?

"Universal" studios? A number of "artists" might agree...