“On March 10, 1977…Roman Polanski brought Samatha Bailey to his friend Jack Nicholson’s house in the Hollywood Hills. He urged her into the Jacuzzi, encouraged her to strip, gave her a Quaalude, followed her to where she sat on a couch, penetrated her, shifted his position, penetrated her anally, ejaculated. All of these details piled up, but I was left with a simple fact: anal rape of a thirteen-year-old.” (p. 3)
Claire Dederer explores a question that has been raised on this blog occasionally–most incisively by Deb–how can you enjoy a novel, painting, movie, or sculpture when you know the artist is a monster? Dederer starts with Roman Polanski and moves on to Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, the anti-LGBTQ+ stance of J. K. Rowling, and other Big Name artists.
Dederer brings up Doris Lessing–who abandoned two of her children–and Joni Mitchell who sings about her child on Blue. The various mis-deeds of Raymond Carver and Miles Davis concludes Dederer’s study.
Artists are not saints. Dederer wonders if she’s a monster because she loves some of the movies, novels, paintings, and music created by people who have done some Bad Things.
In her brilliant comment on Michael Dirda’s article “predicting” writers who would stay relevant, Deb pretty much nails the crux of this dilemma:
“As for Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, it will be interesting to see how future critical opinion addresses ongoing accusations of misogyny, sexism and racism in their work.
Years ago, I remember posting something to the effect that now humanities majors were so often women rather than men, male authors who had been utter pigs toward women in their personal lives (regardless of their perceived liberal political outlooks) would not fare well in posterity. No one want to read the books of a man who almost stabbed his wife to death (Mailer) or was serially unfaithful (Bellow) or who served his wife with a petty itemized list of reimbursements he expected from her, including the down payment for her car (Roth). Women don’t want to waste their time reading books written by men like that.
I may have been on to something.”
What do you think? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Prologue: The Child Rapist: Roman Polanski — 3
- Roll Call: Woody Allen — 14
- The Stain: Michael Jackson — 40
- The Fan: J. K. Rowling — 51
- The Critic: Clare Dederer — 61
- The Genius: Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway — 81
- The Anti-Semite, the Racist, and the Problem of Time: Richard Wagner, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather — 112
- The Anti-Monster: Vladimir Nabokov — 134
- The Silencer and the Silenced: Carl Andre, Ana Medieta — 151
- Am I a Monster? — 160
- Abandoning Mothers: Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell — 175
- Lady Lazarus: Valerie Solana’s, Sylvia Plath – 210
- Drunks: Raymond Carver — 225
- The Beloveds: Miles Davis — 243
- Acknowledgments — 259
- Notes — 261