Another What Does An Artist's Character Matter?

 Which is More Important, the Writer or the Writing? (Joe Ponepinto, Beyond Craft) raises this question again. It is becoming so frequent that I am wondering if it is not a sign of the zeitgeist. Unless, another essay presents a better argument, this will be the last. I think Mr. Ponepinto's essay well-written, so go read it if you find yourself confused by his conclusion.

The complexity of the human experience, let alone the writer’s experience, is just too great to reduce down to a lifestyle judgment. As difficult as it may seem, we must do our best to keep the work and the artist separate—for our writing’s sake as well as theirs. The ideas and revelations conveyed in great literature are far more important than the people who wrote them. To devalue them because of who wrote them shortchanges not only the writers, but ourselves as well.

I do not know of a single author whose work I read because of their biography, and vice versa. Not that before the internet we knew much about our the people we read; this is why I wonder if this question really troubles our post-internet generations.

If you find a person abhorrent for (fill-in the blank), then explain how you attained such an exalted spiritual state. Plenty of room below in the comments.

Would you also please explain how you manage to deal with any other human being having such moral squeamishness?

I do not read Norman Mailer because he tried killing his wife, but because I find him boring more often than not.

I read Philip Roth because he was a great writer, and his personal life does not matter to me.

It seems to me that if you read fiction and the author's biography slips in, then either it is not very well written or you are a very poor reader.

Let him who has not sinned, cast the first stone.

sch 11/3

 Ted Gioia's Derek Thompson on the Anti-Social Century feels like it belongs here. At least, it seems to align with my ideas that current thinking is too self-contained.

Derek: I think many writers live with a kind of hypocrisy at the heart of their work. And I would say that my personal hypocrisy is that I’m mostly optimistic about science and technology, but I’m also pessimistic about the social changes that come with science and technology. And so in a weird way, I find myself often writing about how thrilled we should be about all sorts of advances in medical technology and biotech. I’m fascinated, by the way, with just GLP-1s and everything they seem to do. And at the same time, I find myself consistently drawn to the way that modernity changes habits and behaviors in ways I find often quite bad.

I wrote this cover story for The Atlantic on the phenomenon that I called the anti-social century. And the antisocial century emerged really from one key statistic that I found in the American Time Use Survey. One of the things that they ask is, how much time do you spend socializing with other people in face-to-face communication? And the key statistic that I found is that the average amount of face-to-face socializing in this century has declined for all Americans by about 20% and for young Americans by about 40 to 50%. What I’m identifying here is the fact that in the 25 years since Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone there has been an antisocial quarter of a century. It touches the anxiety crisis that we see among young people. I think it changes our politics by alienating us from our neighbors. I think there are so many different tendrils that emerge from the phenomenon of the anti-social century.

People are not dealing with other people. Flaky self-righteousness abounds.

sch