Separating the art from the artist?

[Jibran]

Antonomasia wrote: "(I think in practice this is what most people do, as whilst they may be consistent over a particular issue, there will be things they consider not good, but those issues don't mean as much to them so they disregard them as reasons not to read authors.)"

Absolutely. Every reaction is ultimately personal and it is difficult to be consistent and objective over every issue especially when the art, despite being good in other ways, reflects the problematic views. I'd understand a stronger reaction to Conrad by a Congolese or black African reader than someone from another part of the world.

But I also agree with David that a better evaluation of a book or a work of art happens when we check our emotional reaction and make an effort to judge what is being presented rather than who is presenting it. Not always that simple but everything is lost if there's no acknowledgment of this idea. Sometimes the personal life of the artist is mistakenly projected on to his/her work even when there are no clear connections. But that's for another day.

I don't really think that those who see the art and the artist as one are as consistent as it's thought they are when it comes to throwing books away, as did the prospective author from the NYT article.

I have a bigger problem when personal emotional reaction becomes a whipping lash in the hands of some people. Friends here must be familiar with the debate around Look Who's Back. And I've already mentioned Andre Gide.

[Jibran]

Antonomasia wrote: This seems like a good explanation of the way Walker apparently connects antisemitism with the difficulties she had with her (white Jewish) ex husband:

Thanks for the links and explanation. I wasn't aware of the background of the story. It seems the kind of personal prejudice that develops through a combination of nearness and bad experience. This truly is a knotty issue.

[David]

Jibran wrote: "Friends here must be familiar with the debate around Look Who's Back."

I had not heard of that book before, but a quick search gives me an idea of what the controversy was. I am sure more than a few people in discussing it probably talked about Mel Brooks' The Producers and probably should also discuss the (very underrated) Spike Lee film, Bamboozled. Satire can be a very tricky business.

[Trevor]

David, I don't think we're too far apart in the end, though I think we feel differently about the way we get there. I do still advocate for separating the art from the artist (in both directions; an artist who writes about something ugly doesn't necessarily hold those views; an artist who holds ugly views doesn't necessarily include them in his or her work), even when it means forgoing ideological purity. I love the section in your post about ideological purity being a problematic goal, and I agree with it. I'm just suggesting that the last few years have given that argument more force and have caused me to realize that my attempts to separate the art from the artist required some mental gymnastics I'm not particularly comfortable with.

Despite all of that, do I think people should read and engage with even problematic art not only by a problematic artist but that also may advocate some of that artist's problematic ideas? Absolutely!

[David]

Trevor wrote: "I'm just suggesting that the last few years have given that argument more force and have caused me to realize that my attempts to separate the art from the artist required some mental gymnastics I'm not particularly comfortable with."

I wonder if the more recent tendency for people to be less inclined to separate the artist from the art is related to two other more recent trends:

(1) The greater concern about who has the standing to write about what, particularly when it comes to writing about characters of particular races or cultures. By being more aware of the connection that writers' personal backgrounds have, in a general sense, to the people they write about, we go into reading something demanding a closer connection between author and text.

(2) The rise of auto-fiction and other sorts of attempts by authors to blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction, between their life and the lives of their characters. I just finished reading Jesse Ball's Silence Once Begun, a story whose main character is named Jesse Ball. Last year I read City Of Glass by Paul Auster where the main character is a man named Paul Auster. While in both cases these are fictional versions of the authors, it does seem odd to maintain that the reader should or even can entirely separate the artist from the art.

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

The greater concern about who has the standing to write about what, particularly when it comes to writing about characters of particular races or cultures.

It's absolutely part of the same set of ethics as this.

The Auster is interesting to bring up as that was from a time when authors both did insert themselves into their work metafictionally *and* when separating the art from the artist was seen in many quarters as the default position of educated people.

Tangent:
I've been wondering recently if things are going to turn a corner soon with memoir, autofiction and especially authorial-journey material in non-fiction. I'm feeling like there's a lot of fatigue and sense of staleness about it now, and together with trends to delete or detox from social media, it would fit. I don't think it can go away completely, because the first-person testimony is a much bigger deal now than it was and more respected - but a sense that there can be too much of it in material that doesn't need it, and that people might want to be a little more private, absolutely.