Cancelling Art from the Edges

Source: Khafizh Amrullah

Cancelling Art from the Edges

Eric Witchey

I have an author friend whose books I love. I’ll call her Barb. However, I must admit that when I read Barb’s work it is hard for me to avoid hearing her voice. It’s a difficult problem. Do I like her books because of my experience living the illusion of the story, or do I live the illusion of the story more completely because I like the author?

This question leaves no doubt in my mind that a reader’s experience is influenced by their understanding of the author. Whether imagined or based on personal experience, the influence of the author haunts the reading experience.

In my university days, some of the classes were designed to expose students to “controversial voices” from various periods of literature. Admittedly, the voices were usually, but not always, safely from the past. I was in no danger of meeting Aldous Huxley, Lord Byron, Sylvia Plath, or Alexander Pope. Each of them had critics, haters, and people generally cooperating to undermine their work during and after their lives.

Paraphrasing their haters, past and present: Huxley was a known associate of homosexuals and an evil leftist. Byron was an entitled hedonist, opium addict, profligate, and seducer of men and women. Plath was a pretentious, intellectual woman who wasted her time writing about lesbians and other topics best left unspoken, and, after all, she was mentally ill, friends with a drug user, and she and her friend both committed suicide. Alexander Pope, well, certainly a man who advocates cannibalism and attempts to undermine the order of the Kingdom should be ignored if not imprisoned and executed! Don’t even get me started on the founding fathers. Those godless, treasonous, insurrectionist slaver hypocrites were the worst of all! Shouldn’t we toss out the constitution instead of trying to extend its benefits equally to all people? The very idea of extending the state’s protection of freedom and equality to all goes against the long-standing traditions of respect for superior bloodlines bestowed upon the chosen by divine right!

Given the parochial attitudes and beliefs of the masses and the self-serving alignment of power against these writers, I cannot imagine what the lives of these artists might have looked like under the scrutiny of the internet microscopes we apply today.

Personally, excepting the authors I’ve known well enough to hear in my head while reading, I’ve never had trouble separating the artist from the art. That doesn’t mean I excuse authors of responsibility for their behavior, and it never means I support themes that justify behavior that hurts other human beings in any way. However, understanding the value of the work in the context of culture and “liking” a theme or an author’s personal behavior are simply not the same thing. In fact, I find it both a joyful thing and sad that the internet has become a place where all opinions, no matter how undiscerning, can be heard and amplified. It is, in a very real way, a great equalizer—an experiment in open democracy. In another way, it is limiting in that it raises the value of unconsidered opinions that once required editorial vetting before reaching the public eye.

The Purple Rose of Cairo was a brilliant film. Enjoying it on a thematic and technical level is very easy for me. At the same time, I find myself in gut-level agreement that the cancellation of Woody Allen’s biography was much deserved. That said, I have no personal evidence for the latter. I’m only reacting at a gut level to my exposure to the unfettered, mob information available via feeds, social media, and popular new services.

Years ago, before any controversy surrounded Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game was the first full book I was able to read after the burnout I experienced from grad school. Because of the profound relief and gratitude I felt when I finished that book and fully internalized the knowledge that I was still able to read a science fiction novel for the sheer pleasure of immersion in the world and ideas, Ender will forever be part of my life. I followed Ender with Seventh Son and its sequels in the Alvin Maker series, and I loved them. That said, and my relationship with all organized religion being strained at best, I have no desire to meet Mr. Card even though I know he might well be a grounded, intelligent, generous, kind soul. I certainly have no personal experience to suggest otherwise, but the swirl of noise around his name has triggered my own deep defense mechanisms and made me resistant to the idea of meeting him.

Still, I am grateful to him and the difficulties of his life for giving me Ender and Alvin.

I believe liberals and conservatives alike should read Atlas Shrugged even though I find it reprehensible on a thematic level and would never, ever want to meet the author. When I met Terry Brooks, who brought so much magic into the lives of readers, he came across as condescending and rude. Perhaps I triggered him. I know he is kind to others, and I saw him being very kind and generous with others. My impression of him from a weekend of interaction where we were both teaching at a conference doesn’t mean I went home and burned the books I loved so much in my teens and twenties. I have no idea what his life is like. I don’t know how he came to the moment we met. Nothing he did or said to me had any influence over the many hours of pleasure I received from him through the pages of his work—work crafted by a complex human being to create those experiences for other human beings.

When I met Christopher Moore while we were both teaching at a conference, he screwed up the inscription on a gift for my brother’s birthday because he was flirting with a conference minion. We grew up 11 miles apart in Ohio. My assumption of common ground in my 30-second chat after standing in the signing line was completely ignored. The experience was deeply disappointing, and at some conferences experienced by a different person, that moment might have resulted in a growing storm of rumor-based resentment that spilled over into blogs, Instagram reactions, and Tweets. For me, it was annoying, but I have to admit the minion was willing and worth a little flirtatious banter by a bored author signing book after book after book. I still read Mr. Moore’s books because they make me smile. My brother loved the gift and even the flawed inscription. Mr. Moore went on to write more books I like, and we will meet again someday.

Anne Perry was convicted of murdering her friend’s mother. Should we never read her mysteries? Do we toss out the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton because of drug abuse and because they committed suicide? Should we dump George Orwell because he was socially awkward, had complex relationships, advocated certain popular prejudices of the day, and was a leftist? Ayn Rand for her acidic Spencerian Darwinism? Hemingway for his depression, drinking, condescension, willingness to trick aspiring writers into absurd behaviors, and cruelty to animals?

Hmm… Tricking writers and abusing animals may be the same thing.

Personally, I believe I would have disliked Hemingway for many reasons, but I still hold dear The Old Man and the Sea, and, much like King Lear, every year I age Santiago’s fishing trip becomes more powerful to me.

In thirty years as a full-time, freelance writer, I have never met a writer who didn’t have brilliant light and deepest darkness tangled up inside them, haunting them, and driving their behavior on some level. When the darkness takes their behavior across societal, and legal, boundaries, they often create responses and consequences they deserve. When that same combination only appears in their private lives and between the covers of books, they may be no less a monster in the world. Nor are they any less a saint when the light inside them dominates their behavior. The insight of the most troubled people at the edges of our world may tempt people who want to simplify the human experience into good and evil to mount campaigns of cancellation. However, time and history have shown that the insights from the brightest and darkest edges of human experience are often most valued over time. Sadly, which insights are the brightest and which are the darkest can only be determined by the readers of the future—provided those works exist for consideration.

For me, the works of artists of all kinds stand alone and are, in some measure, born of the perspectives that are part and parcel with the individual’s twisting, tangled mix of light and darkness. I would have it no other way.

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