Recently there have been online discussions about a young woman in the US who got on a committee that was choosing books for study at her university specifically to prevent a YA novel from making it on to the curriculum. She said it was a good book, but they should be studying adult books instead, because you know, leaving childish stuff behind or something along those lines. Hmm... I’d have something to say about that, but I’d say it politely, unless she got abusive, however rude I felt like being. And it would be a debate, not a personal attack.
But the YA author who was no longer going to get royalties from that particular college had no hesitation in getting personal, and got some of her YA author friends to do the same. I won’t name them, but they were some big names who should have known better. As far as I’m concerned, they were behaving very unprofessionally, especially as the fans who were following them would be influenced by whatever they said. I was very disappointed in them, because there were some whose work I had read and loved. One was a young author who had probably become way too successful way too soon in her career, and consequently thought more of herself than she was worth.
However, the Guardian article about this was not so much about the unprofessional behaviour of these big name authors, but about how dare they attack her when she was right! Adult books were so much more worth reading and why would any adult be reading a book for teenagers in the first place? I saw red when the smug journalist declared that while she had loved To Kill A Mockingbird, for example, let’s face it, it was a children’s book!
Someone once said that adult books were about important issues such as divorce, while children’s books were about unimportant stuff such as the battle between good and evil. So, maybe she was right and it is a children’s book?
At the Melbourne Writers Festival recently, crime novelist Val McDermid, who has judged the Booker awards before said drily that there were an awful lot of dinner parties in a North London happening in the entrants she read. And this is one of the world’s major awards, with huge prizes and lots of sales for anyone who got even on the long list, while here in Australia the CBCA awards for children’s books were nearly closed down some years ago for lack of funds. Nice, eh?
The actual discussion on Twitter that inspired this post was about whether or not you would keep reading work by authors whose behaviour had disappointed you. Some said no, others said that there were a lot of nasty pieces of work out there who had, however, produced wonderful books and where did you draw the line?
I rather think I’m with them on that - there are some dreadful people producing works of genius, and have been throughout history. Beethoven? You wouldn’t want to be his nephew, but his soul was in that glorious music.
And Thomas Malory, author of the Morte D’Arthure? He wrote that immortal piece of storytelling in jail. While it’s probably true that he picked the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses, that’s not why he was serving time. He was in trouble for robbery and maybe for rape.
I have to wonder, would I be put off him if he was around now, with a Twitter or Facebook account, being called out by the #metoo movement for what he had done, and no doubt denying it?
Probably, though with great sadness.
I should add that I’m no fan of Wagner, though admittedly not only for his antisemitism, but because I consider his music loud and vulgar. But that’s me, and I’m in the minority here. Until recently, I thought that I at least could enjoy The Mastersingers Of Nuremberg, more tuneful than his most of other work, but saw it again during the Australian Opera’s recent season and decided it was just as flag waving and awful as others I’ve seen. And antisemitism is there even if it doesn’t specifically mention Jews. But even when I did think I liked it, I was always a bit uncomfortable with seeing anything by Wagner.
So - I guess my reply would be “It depends.” More recent work is easier to feel uncomfortable with.
What would you do?
14 comments:
I too am very disappointed with artists, writers and musical masters who do horrible things, ESPECIALLY when were some were people whose work I had loved. It comes as such a shock when the work itself is vulgar (eg Wagner's anti-Semitism) or the artist/writer lives an immoral, hurtful personal life (eg Hemingway kept marrying his girlfriends, without talking to his previous wives or sending money for the various children).
Go with your conscience! Don't deal with artists and writers who are/used to be offensive.
Hi Hels! I think I feel the same way. I probably won’t stop reading Malory or listening to Beethoven, though. ;-)
I observed much of the Twitter drama that you are referring to and even weighed in on it on Twitter. You raise some interesting questions here about authors behaving badly. My general rule is to separate the writer from the work. However that is easier said then done and I think that actually observing such behavior might have the practical effect of souring me away from reading a book that they had written. I agree that it seems different when it comes to a living and active writer. I will note that the author who started all this publicly apologized. That apology would be enough for me and if I was inclined to read one of her books I would have done so without hesitation as a result.
I’m glad to hear she apologised, though it does scare me somewhat to think she is capable of personal abuse of that kind. I have one of her novels, which was in the goody bag at a conference I attended but I’m not sure I will be finishing it. To be fair, if it was my sort of book rather than a contemporary drama, I might have finished it anyway, then donated it to a school library rather than kept it.
authors sometimes forget that can be models to other people and thus should behave properly....then i absolutely refuse to accept teh fact that a book genre is said less important than another....Ya vs adult? why? we can read all we want and each book is worth analysis and while topic may be written with shifters or other creatures the messages behind can be really worth it
Well said, miki!
It really does depend doesn't it? sometimes I wonder if its better not to know too much about an Author although conversely I love knowing about them. But I've met a couple of favourite Authors at Cons who really didn't impress me and it ruined their work for me which was a bummer. However My memories of reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon are wonderful and aren't tainted by my later knowledge of her personal life.
But the YA versus Adult thing is annoying isn't it? And I'm not sure what makes To Kill a Mockingbird a Children's book. Certainly plenty of Adult themes there.
I think the difference between the historical artists you mentioned and the current ones is "the times have changed". While behaviour of historical composers, authors etc might be condemned now, sadly back then it probably wasn't. But in this day and age (especially with social media) I have a real problem with bad behaviour.
I used to read Anne Perry, but struggle to now after I realised the connection - I can't help but wonder how her experiences have influenced her writing. I guess it isn't so much because of her behaviour directly, but because it distracts me from the story. Luckily my favourite authors seem to behave themselves.
The problem is also with artists. The works of Donald Friend are off the walls in most galleries. The works of Picasso though are still hanging though there is some debate about his behaviour now nobody is yet suggesting they be removed.
I watched the movie "Manhattan" not long ago. I loved the cinematography and the music, I felt extremely uncomfortable with the plot, especially after an interview Mariel Hemingway gave https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/03/woody-allen-mariel-hemingway-manhattan
That we question is almost certainly a good thing. I am still ambivalent about whether the artist, author, composer, film maker can be separated from their work.
Hi Anita! Yes, in these days social media makes it just too easy not only to behave badly but for everyone to know about it. There will, of course, always be those who defend them, no matter what they say or do, especially their social media followers. What if Wagner had had a Facebook or a Twitter account? I wonder...
Anne Perry? Historical crime fiction? I don’t know anything else about her.
Hi Jane! Yes, you d9 wish you didn’t have to know about your favourite authors, but you and I both, as SF fans, are likely to run into them at conventions. Not only that, but children’s and YA writers at library conferences. I’ve taken my students to hear their favourite authors. One, a wonderful writer and really quite nice, nevertheless dominated his panel and went on about himself non stop. My young man, a huge fan, was a bit disappointed in his hero and I suspect he wished he had just read the books. Another award-winning YA author overwhelmed her fellow panellist and wouldn’t let him get a word in.
I didn’t find out about Marion Zimmer Bradley till afternoon she died, and I only knew about Orson Scott Card when I met a couple who had to come Australia for a con to escape the New Zealand con where he was GOH.
Hi Anne! Thanks for the link, which I will check out. A shame about Woody Allen, a brilliant film maker who will probably not be welcome anywhere any more because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. I will never be able to see one of his movies again without thinking about what he did. Maybe in a couple of hundred years it will be different. Not now.
Ahh,thought you might know about Anne Perry, aka Juliet Marion Hulme who, at the age of fifteen, was convicted of helping murder her friend's mother - made into the movie Heavenly Creatures. She changed her name after serving her five-year sentence, but was outed when the movie was made.
Ah, I have heard of Heavenly Creatures and the background, didn’t connect it with the novelist.
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