All Books Aloud

Can you separate the book from the author?

• Elizabeth Brookbank & Martha Brookbank • Season 1 • Episode 5

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CW: discussions of sexual assault and other crimes, racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry, as well as Zionism (all in reference to books and authors from the 19th/20th centuries, rather than to current news).

Can you separate the book from the author? The art from the artist? What do we do with books that were written by people with views that we disagree with or who have done things we find morally objectionable? Can we entirely put these scruples aside and appreciate art on it's aesthetic merits alone? If not, and we stop consuming all art created by people who have done or said things we don't like, will there be any art left? Can we make some kind of rule or sliding scale (severity of crime vs. greatness of art...?) that will work for every situation? What about when the art was formative for us and holds a very important place in our life? What about when the art is based on something that really happened? What about when the offense the artist committed is something that we have personally survived? 

You might not be surprised to learn that we were not able to answer all these questions and solve the world's problems in this episode! But, we did grapple mightily with these questions and ended up in a place we both feel comfortable with. Will you feel the same? Listen to find out!

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Books we're reading in this episode:  
In Love with George Eliot by Kathy O'Shaughnessy
Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women series book #3) by Evie Dunmore
Babel by R.F. Kuang
The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood And Ash Series Book #3) by Jennifer L Armentrout
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Sources listed in the order they appear in the ep:  

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Intro and outro music: "The Chase," by Aves.

Do you have thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes? Email us at allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com. And if you want to learn more about the podcast, visit our website at allbooksaloudpod.com.

If you liked this episode, please consider leaving us a review to help us reach more listeners.

And if you'd like to see more bookish content from Martha & Elizabeth, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @allbooksaloudpod.

Read on!

[All Books Aloud intro and theme music]

Martha: Hey Liz. 

Elizabeth: Hi, I'm Martha. 

Martha: How are you doing? 

Elizabeth: I'm well, busy, busy. 

Martha: Yeah? What are you working on? 

Elizabeth: A lot. But I just finished an editing pass of the novel that I'm currently working on. So, that has been. A big thing that I just finished, yeah. That's all I'm willing to say. 

Martha: Well, [00:01:00] that's exciting. Nonetheless, that's great news. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, it is exciting. So what have you been reading lately?

Martha: I am about 80 pages into Babel by R. F. Kuang. That's what I'm currently reading. She also just put out a really popular book called Yellowface 

Elizabeth: oh, yes. 

Martha: You've probably heard of it.

Elizabeth: I have heard of it, and it is definitely on my list to read, because it's about the publishing industry, right? 

Martha: Yeah,  and so this is kind of a different genre, but the same author. I don't know where she's finding the time to write all these books, but it's great. She's also working on getting her PhD in East Asian languages and literatures at Yale.
So... Kudos to Rebecca. 

Elizabeth: She's figured out how to bend time or something. 

Martha: Yeah, something which Babel is a historical fantasy [00:02:00] and there's an element of magic. It's set in a fictionalized version of Oxford and it follows a group of translators. And then I'm listening to the third book in the Blood and Ash series by Jennifer L. Armentrout. It's called The Crown of Gilded Bones. It's a romance, fantasy, that type of genre that I really like to listen to. What are you reading? 

Elizabeth: I am reading a print book called In Love with George Eliot by Kathy O'Shaughnessy. In my continuing obsession with George Eliot right now. 

Martha: Nice. 

Elizabeth: I'm in my George Eliot era.

Martha: You are. So what's this one about? 

Elizabeth: It's really interesting, it is a novelization of her life. So it is fiction, but it's based on real events that happened in her life and journal entries and letters that [00:03:00] you can read and then the author fills in the blanks basically. But then it also is interwoven with a current day story of two academics who, work at a university and are both writing books about George Eliot. Different things to do with George Eliot, but there's definitely academia competition element to it. But also, a complicated female friendship. It's great. I'm really enjoying it. 

Martha: Cool. It sounds good.

Elizabeth: . And then I'm listening to Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore, which is the third in that series, the first of which is Bringing Down the Duke. And the second is A Rogue of One's Own. And I think the first one is still my favorite, but I love all of them and I'm loving this one.

And it's really fun, that series. 

Martha: Yeah, I love that series too. You told me about that and I listened to them on audiobook 

Elizabeth: yeah, this is the first one that I'm listening to. I [00:04:00] read the first two in print, but then you told me you listened to the audiobooks and enjoyed them, and so I thought I would give this one a try for the audiobook. I think this is the last one. Is that right? 

Martha:  I think Katrina's story is still coming out. 

Elizabeth: Oh, right, of course. Yes, there's a fourth friend who hasn't had a story yet. 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: That's exciting. 

Martha: Yeah, I pre ordered it on Audible, so it should just show up in my library when it's available, so. 

Elizabeth: Ooh. 

Martha: I'll let you know.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Exciting. Okay. Well, let's jump into our topic for this episode. It's a more serious one than we've done before. It is, whether and how we can separate a book from its author. 

Martha: Yeah. So we do want to give a bit of a content warning for this episode, so if you're listening with kids, you might want to skip this one for now and come back to it later. Our topic touches on themes ranging from morally questionable [00:05:00] opinions and behavior to criminal acts such as sexual assault and abuse.

So if you're sensitive to any of these issues, just be aware that we will discuss them. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

It's definitely a little bit of a chunkier one for us. I think it's a really good and important topic though. To get started, let's talk a little bit about why we felt the need to talk about this, like the background.

Martha: So it is Harry Potter season in my world. It runs from fall, Halloween ish time through the holidays. This is the time of year that I like to re listen to Harry Potter. I do it every year. It's kind of like a comfort thing for me and I want to get a little bit personal with why I connect so much with the Harry Potter books.

 As Elizabeth knows, but many of our listeners probably don't. I wasn't allowed to read the [00:06:00] Harry Potter books as a kid. Our parents.

Didn't do Halloween, still don't do Halloween, witchcraft and wizardry was off limits for us. And, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came out in 1997, I was 7 years old. Liz is a little older than me, you would have been like 15. So I'd be curious to see.

Elizabeth: That was very generous. 

Martha: Well, I'd be curious to know , if Harry Potter was hyped up for your age group.

But I know for me... The first book was very hyped up for my age group. Seven year olds wanted to read The Sorcerer's Stone. And as the books kept coming out, the characters kept getting older. We kind of grew up with them. So I managed to sneak and read the first book before mom and dad really caught on, to [00:07:00] what the whole series was about.

But then after, it was in the media and they learned about what it was, it was like, Nope, no more Harry Potter for Martha. 

Elizabeth: Oh. 

Martha: And, I know, and we talked about this in another episode. I am a rule follower. . So I didn't read any other Harry Potters, even though we had a class guinea pig.

That we named Harry, H A I R Y, which is a very punny name for a group of fourth graders. And I was in a combined fourth, fifth grade class, so I got to take Harry home and take care of him for one summer. So, Harry actually lived with us. 

Elizabeth: That's so cute. 

Martha: Do you remember that? 

Elizabeth: No, I have no recollection of this at all.

Martha: Oh my gosh. 

Elizabeth: Was I still home when this happened? 

Martha: Yeah, you were, you were like 15, 16. So you were in your room reading whatever classic you were into at the time. And I was putting hair ties in [00:08:00] Hairy's hair to keep 'em out of his eyes. I have a picture of Uncle Steve with him. Anyway, this is a whole like personal family aside.

 So I rediscovered Harry Potter later as an adult. The same friend of mine, Kristy, who introduced me to Outlander on Audible. She was like, you have to listen to Harry Potter. She's a huge fan of Harry Potter, Jim Dale, all that. So she turned me on to listening to it, and as I already talked about in another episode, The Jim Dale readings of Harry Potter is my favorite way to consume them.

And at the risk of sounding like a cliché, now when I can look back at it, I realized... Listening to those books and connecting to those books was part of me healing my inner child, right? Allowing that seven year old Martha to read the book she wanted to [00:09:00] read. And so, ever since I listened to them the first time, I like to listen to them at least once a year.

It's kind of like a comfort for me. It's like a bowl of soup or a warm hug. And so, around this time of year? I listen to all the books. 

Elizabeth: I love that. 

I don't know if it is cliche or not, but we love therapy here. So, yes. The concept of healing your inner child, I think, is, is a great one. And I, I knew this, but I've never heard you fully encapsulate it before.

And I'm really glad that you did because I feel like it's, It's so great, and it's so great to hear how meaningful it is for you, because it was a totally different experience for me. I'm actually surprised to hear that I was only 15 or 16 when the first Harry Potter came out, because My memory of that is that I was way too old for Harry Potter when it came out, and I actually did read all the Harry Potter books, but it was the summer [00:10:00] after I graduated from college when I was living with Aunt Linda for six months and didn't have anything else to do because I didn't have a job yet, and , I read every single book just in a row for over a two or three week period, my job was reading Harry Potter.

 Like Ken's job is Beach in the Barbie movie. My job was reading Harry Potter. And so I did read them when I was relatively young, but I thought of that as like, A book that was for, yeah, for, I mean, for people that were my baby sister's age, which, yeah, I just, for whatever reason, that phenomenon just totally missed me.

And I do think that part of it was probably because my reading at that time was so focused on the classic. I was probably in my room reading Jane Eyre or Les Miserables or something. Like, I was not into, into books for kids at that point, even though I was still a kid. I was quite precocious, as we've discussed before.

So the, yeah. Separating the book from the author topic came up because when we did our [00:11:00] audiobooks episode, right, we talked about the Jim Dale narrated Harry Potter books, like you were just mentioning, because you love those books and, and it's one of your favorite audiobook narrators. And I felt very strongly that we needed to, in that episode, give a disclaimer about the fact that we are aware.

That there is controversy around J. K. Rowling and around her opinions about transgender people, essentially. And I didn't want people to sort of jump down our throats because they thought that we were ignorant of that. And we set it aside and said we'll talk about it at some point.

And so that is... How we have ended up here, right? This episode is coming out at the time that you would normally be rereading Harry Potter, as you just described. So we wanted to really talk about this topic and give it a fuller treatment.

Martha: The [00:12:00] time has come. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, the time has come. So we've been thinking about it a lot, obviously in preparation for talking about it, I didn't connect as deeply to the Harry Potter books when I was younger.

So when all of this started coming to my attention about, JK Rowling being really vocal about , her opinions, I felt really torn about it, and I still feel torn about it, because on the one hand, I know that Harry Potter means a lot to a lot of people. I know that the person that writes a book and a book are different things.

 I can say that as someone who writes books. They're not my identity and it's not biography. It's something that I create and then I put into the world. But on the other hand, I very much don't agree with the things that Rowling has said about transgender people.

And I don't want the trans people who are in my life, who are important to me, to think that by [00:13:00] continuing to read Harry Potter, that that somehow means that I agree with her, align myself with her, right? And I don't actually know if anyone would think that, but I think that that's sort of the fear.

And A lot of times people sort of oversimplify it to, for it to be that way, right? That if you keep consuming someone's art who does something that you don't agree with, that that means that you're aligning yourself with them.

And I actually just really think that it's a lot more complicated than that, which is why we're talking about it. But that's sort of where I come to this topic and to J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter specifically..

There are all sorts of questions that we can ask ourselves like, does it make a difference if the person is long dead versus a person who's still alive like JK Rowling and potentially making money off of the books that people are still reading.

Martha: Yeah, let's dive into all the different perspectives and see what we come up with [00:14:00] at the end. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think that's a good idea and I think a way to do that is really to try to get away from the specifics of any one situation. So we talked a little bit more about J. K.

Rowling, because that was the impetus for this topic, but it's not really about her, right? It's not really about any one person, and it's not about this, vapid, I think, vapid concept of cancel culture, which I hate, as you can tell, as a term, because I find it Somehow, at the same time, both superficial and hollow, because I don't think that it really means anything, or at least it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

And also, loaded, because it has become this dog whistle, like political dog whistle for some people, right? Where it's like a way to, slur the people on the other side of you politically by saying that they're trying to cancel someone or other. So that's not really what we're talking [00:15:00] about, right?

Martha: Yeah, it's just a buzzword that they use to invoke some sort of reaction from both sides, I feel like. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, definitely. But these two things get conflated . we're not talking about cancel culture. What we're talking about is the much deeper issue, which I tried to, to touch on when I was talking about Harry Potter, which is there is a real moral issue for people to think about here when it comes to, can we separate The art that we consume from the people who made it, if the people who made it hold opinions that we don't agree with, or more seriously have done things that we find morally reprehensible, or that are criminal, or, are somehow, very much more clearly wrong.

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: And... So the way that I think that we should talk about this is just talking about, all of these different ways that this can happen in different examples. And the [00:16:00] place that I always go when I think about this topic is an essay, from 2017 that was published in the Paris Review by a writer named Claire Dederer.

Dederer. I think I'm saying her name right. And it's really worth reading. In its entirety. I'm not going to be able to get all of its points out. 

Martha: No, but we'll link it in the show notes and make sure people can access it. 

Elizabeth: Yes, this essay came out, like I said, in 2017.

So it was right after the 2016 election. And everything that went on then. And it was also during the height of the Me Too movement. So it was during a time when I feel like As a culture, we were reckoning with bad things that people have done, mostly bad things that men had done to women, right?

 And so this essay centers around[00:17:00] , two different filmmakers. She talks a lot about Woody Allen and she talks a lot about Roman Polanski. Both of those filmmakers have, done things that fall, on the spectrum of morally reprehensible to criminal.

Again, we're not going to get into the details because you can Google it for yourself and that's not really what's important. But I found the way that she talked about these different examples to be really enlightening. And then she actually has also gone on to write a book with a longer Treatment of this topic that I also want to make sure to mention. It's called Monsters a Fan's Dilemma, and it just came out this year. 

In the essay, Dederer is basically, grappling with this question of can she still watch Woody Allen movies and Roman Polanski movies while also hating the things that they have done in real life and feeling those things really deeply as a [00:18:00] woman, and goes through all the pros and cons of that. Dederer is really interested in these filmmakers because she used to be a film critic. But there are also a lot of different versions of this. A lot of authors that lived in the past, especially, in the 19th and 20th centuries, there were many people that were,  antisemitic, held racist views or other bigoted views, because most people at that time had views that were, Along that spectrum in some way, right?

So, Virginia Woolf, famously, Agatha Christie, like most aristocrats of her day, Charles Dickens was very sympathetic to the lower classes, but some people find his work to be, xenophobic, he was supportive of colonialism, and again, none of that is surprising for the time period, but it's sort of like, what do you do with that?

Right. Yeah.

I'm happy to say in an unqualified [00:19:00] way that these opinions are bad. But none of them are surprising for the time period. People in the past. held opinions and did things and thought things that we today think are problematic.

Just like I think that, people in the future are probably going to think that some of the things that we think today are problematic. Right? 

Martha: Yeah. Yeah. We just won't be there to know. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, we don't know what people in the future are going to think about. Things like, the way we dealt with climate change, or, factory farming.

But these are things that, most people are not on the forefronts of changing, for better or worse., you can make arguments about that. And there were people, back in the 19th century that were saying that it's wrong to be  antisemitic, for sure. It's not just that everyone thought the same way.

 Just like there are people now that, are on the streets, about climate change or that are, activists when it comes to the treatment of animals. But most of us, can only do so much. Like we go to the grocery store and we buy what's [00:20:00] there, you know, and so, so 

Martha: Yeah, we're just living our lives the best we can for the most part, 

Elizabeth: right.

And, to some people that might make us complicit, I think for most people, we understand that life is hard and that you just do your best. But I think that that does apply to looking at people who lived a long time ago holding opinions or holding views that we don't agree with. I talked in the beginning of the episode about my current Crush , slash obsession, George Eliot, and things that she did or said, I think, are not as problematic as some of these other examples that I've mentioned. But, she did write a novel called Daniel Deronda, it was her last, novel that had, Jewish characters in a storyline that dealt with Zionism.

And Her intention in doing it was to be sensitive and to explore the world of these people that were different from her and to bring [00:21:00] it to light for, British society at the time. But in the way that, well meaning white women today, in doing something like that can subconsciously be racist or do something or say something racist.

Without meaning to, because it's just the water that we're all swimming in, right? It's the air that we're breathing, it's the world, it's the society that we're living in. That is how this book comes off to a lot of people today.

She's casually racist about some of the Jewish characters in the book. She wrote one character as being so good, so angelic, without a fault, that it tipped over into that noble savage trope, where the person was, sort of inhuman, right? So there are all these issues with that book, but, I'm talking about this because this one is an easier one for me to parse out than some of the other examples that we've talked about.

 For me, the fact that George Eliot had those blind spots does [00:22:00] not. Make me think that I shouldn't be reading Middlemarch, which I think is a work of genius. Or Adam Bede, which I just listened to and thought was amazing. But speaking of Adam Bede, the character of Hetty in Adam Bede is , like, as a woman writing that character, I actually am really frustrated with George Eliot because she talks about her as a simpleton.

 I won't give away too much of the book because I don't want to spoil the plot, but she gets into trouble because she just didn't have the mental capacity to see what was coming, is the tone. 

Hetty's character is relevant because George Eliot also had some really serious internalized misogyny. By any objective measure, she was a feminist in how she lived. She was a writer who insisted on publishing during a time when women didn't do that very often.

She lived with a man who was not her husband and who actually was married to someone else. And they lived as husband and wife. And she was really... ostracized for this, and he [00:23:00] wasn't. He was allowed to go into society, he could visit people, people could visit him, but she basically had a scarlet letter on her chest, and that really impacted her.

It was painful for her, it was the reason that she wrote under a male pseudonym, so she had all these reasons to, be a feminist, but she refused to support women's rights in her time, and even wrote an essay criticizing other women who were writing at the time called Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.

 That, was basically her saying that she felt like women who are writing less serious novels than she was were basically giving women a bad name,

Martha: well, because that was the common feeling of the day, of the time. She was just in the majority.

Elizabeth: Right and, she was, a genius and she was a better writer than the women that she was talking about. So it was like she held herself above that and [00:24:00] maybe she was right, but As a feminist in the 21st century, I find that to be annoying.

I find that frustrating, especially because I know that she was so impacted in her personal life by this double standard that women were subjected to. 

Martha: But that's not going to make you stop reading George Eliot. 

Elizabeth: No, certainly not.

Martha: I think that it's a spectrum when we're talking about this topic.

There's a spectrum. I mean, George Eliot's quote unquote crimes, let's say, against feminism from our point of view in the 21st century is different from an artist or an author who actually committed a crime, so that would make it a little bit harder to reconcile if you still wanted to consume the work of art , the severity of the crime.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean, it certainly does make it easier. I don't know if I feel like it changes the equation, but it's easier [00:25:00] to make a decision about that one and move on, right? that's sort of a good segue, into talking about some of those more serious cases.

Because I do wonder, is it some kind of sliding scale? When a person has done something that actually is criminal, is, horrendous. Like the earlier examples I was giving in the  Dederer essay, Woody Allen, the controversy around him is about the relationship that he had with the daughter of his partner, Mia Farrow.

And. that's something, again, like I was saying, Dederer was writing in the Me Too era, so that type of behavior was really on people's minds. 

Martha: Oh, there's lots of examples of that too. I mean, Woody Allen's just one example.

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly. I mean, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Miles Davis, it came to light recently, was abusive to women in his life. There are so many examples. 

Martha: I think when you're [00:26:00] talking about actual criminal offenses, it's more often that it's men that are committing these crimes than women.

Elizabeth: Another thing about the issue of gender in this conversation. And not just gender, but also I think other marginalized identities, is that I think Artists and authors are treated differently, depending on what their identity is by society at large.

Martha: Well definitely, there's a double standard. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, we as a society are more likely to, if not forgive this in men, at least look the other way. There's that stereotype of, the male genius artist who's also just terrible to be around, 

 we call that type of character Byronic, after Lord Byron, who was famously a terrible person to be around, especially to the women in his life. Ernest Hemingway is another [00:27:00] example that comes to mind of, a man who was certainly, I don't want to, make sweeping generalizations, but I think it's safe to say that was not nice to a lot of the people in his life, but no one serious suggests that we don't read his work anymore, so it seems like a lot more allowances are made for men who are that mad genius or that dark brooding genius and the two examples that I just gave of Ernest Hemingway and Lord Byron were not talking about criminal offenses, but I think that the, yeah, or that, that would have been charged as crimes during their time, which is the reason I hesitated, because that gets back to what we were talking about, about things changing from past to present, like things that used to be just accepted as the way that men treated women.

And today, a lot of those would be criminal, but they weren't criminal at the time. So it's hard to hold people in the past [00:28:00] accountable by our moral standard and even our legal standard. 

Martha: There's a couple points there that I would make. One being that I think we are desensitized when it comes to the crimes of men, especially, crimes of men against women. And that could be one reason why we tend to look the other way is. We're just desensitized. We're used to it, for lack of a better word. And two, if we started not consuming the works of these problematic artists, we wouldn't have much left, right? 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah, that's really true. There's something that people on social media say all the time, which is that all your favorites are problematic. if you start digging into the past or the behavior of anyone You're going to find something that you don't like.

Martha: And that's not to say we're, okay with it, [00:29:00] or complicit. But it's just the reality.

Elizabeth: It's the reality, yeah. And again, I keep going back to  Dederer because she does bring up a lot of these points that we're covering in her essay. And she talks about, the gender issue in a really interesting way.

 The title of her, essay is, what do we do with the art of monstrous men . And she very early on makes the point that. , that title was chosen intentionally, because it is mostly men that she is talking about.

And when there are examples of women, in her discussion, she talks about the fact that, other than the examples, I've listed, antisemitism or racism, you know, there are women authors who, like Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, Willa Cather, [00:30:00] who, you can put in that category.

But the biggest category of quote unquote monstrous female artists, Dederer makes the point, is women who have been just bad mothers, basically. Like one of the worst things that a woman can do is to be a bad mother because that is seen as her core role in society. So when you start listing women who have that reputation in, culture, people like Doris Lessing or Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath.

 The main reason that people say that about them is because they, abandoned their children either completely abandoned them or for periods of time in order to pursue their art. Whereas we would never include a man in that monstrous category just for being a bad father.

 The idea of doing that is almost laughable.

Martha: He wouldn't be called a bad father. He'd just be called an artist. Like he'd just be working, right? He goes to work and the kids do whatever. But if If the tables are turned, you're, you're being accused of a bad mother. [00:31:00] Look at what's going on right now with Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, which by the time this comes out, people may have already forgotten about it, but basically everyone is seeing right through this argument that Sophie Turner was a bad mother, an absent mother, and they're calling out the fact that.

That's what Joe Jonas's PR team was trying to make it look like. And every woman on the internet is calling their bluff. Which I think is great that as a society we're getting to that point. At least the women in our society are getting to the point of seeing through that argument. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, that is really encouraging.

It also makes me think of another pop culture reference which is, if anyone has seen the Barbie movie. America Ferrara's famous Oscar worthy speech in the Barbie movie about the double bind that women are in. Like, if they, are ambitious, that's wrong.[00:32:00] You should be ambitious but you can't be seen to be being ambitious, right?

 You should be thin, but you can't be being seen to be thin, because then people are going to think you're vain, you know? Yeah. You should be a mother, but you can't make that your whole identity, you know? Whatever you do is the wrong thing. And again, it's not to justify any bad behavior, or any behavior at all, but talking about this issue about people's behavior, it just gets so complicated.

And, yeah, I do think that the standards that we hold women artists to are just different from men. I found there is a quote in the Dederer essay that I was looking for, when I thought of the Ernest Hemingway example. One of his girlfriends and also a writer named Martha Gellhorn, Dederer quotes her as saying, a man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So I guess, you know, she would know about that. But basically, Dederer is [00:33:00] just making this point that it is the type of thing that we, even if we don't expect it in a male artist, it's one of the tropes of a male artist. And if they're not that way, it's almost a reason for celebration.

Martha: Right. Or, People doubt that they really are a genius or a good artist because they don't have that suffering. element, you know? 

Elizabeth: Yeah, right. Good point. Yeah. It's like, oh, you're not, you're not dark and brooding enough. Like, are you sure that you're actually an artist? So we've been talking about how all your favorites are problematic, the concept of not being able to find anyone who is perfect. But what about also the fact that, people throughout their lives can change in any number of ways.

What if they produced the art before they did the thing that we don't agree with, or they committed the crime, does it matter? I think that this is relevant potentially, Thinking back to our initial example of Rowling, although who knows what was in her head, we don't know what people think until they say it out loud is the thing.

[00:34:00] But the other example that I always think about with this is, I have a friend who really liked the book Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. Which, Interview with a Vampire is, it's basically dark erotica if you've never read it. 

And then somewhere during her life, the author Anne Rice, had a moment of being born again and becoming an evangelical Christian, and started only writing Christian literature, and, has had some interviews where she, tries to separate herself from her earlier works, the interview with the vampire.

Yeah. 

Martha: I want to know what her thoughts are on this topic then. 

Elizabeth: It seems to imply that she thinks that those works of art that she created before, she thinks the way that she does now are something that she can sort of distance herself from. Mm-hmm. . Right. 

Martha: Which, like you said earlier, as a writer, you feel like you aren't your art. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Another [00:35:00] thing that comes to mind, is what happens when the art itself, so we're not talking about necessarily about the artist, but what about if the art itself, so the book itself, is based on something that really happened, like a crime that really happened, or a horrible situation or experience that someone really had, And the reason that this is coming to mind is because recently there was a book that came out about the true story of Lolita.

So, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Generally a poster child for the fight against censorship even people who hate it or haven't read it and don't ever want to read it. It will, fight tooth and claw to make sure that other people can read it and have it on the library shelves. So does that change when we find out, as we did in 2018, that [00:36:00] the story of Lolita was actually based on the story of a real little girl who was, kidnapped by a convicted rapist and held captive for almost two years, I want to say.

 The book is by... A writer named Sarah Weinman, if you want to look it up, I'll also put that in the show notes. But yeah, that to me, when I read the story, made me think kind of differently about Lolita. 

Martha: But, you wouldn't advocate for it being banned. You just might not read it again, right?

Elizabeth: No, I would not advocate for any book to be banned, especially because the vast majority of books that are challenged or actually banned, at least in recent years, are books that just have marginalized characters in them, right, like just existing in them, or are written by LGBTQ + or Black authors.

 That's a side topic, but related, but in this case, it's a question of can you, separate in your mind, or can we [00:37:00] separate as individuals? You know, a reading public, the book from the real thing that you know happened to someone.

 I mean, the story of Lolita is upsetting, just in and of itself. But, knowing that this really happened to a real little girl, can we separate that when we're reading the book?

Martha: Well, the difference between If we're talking about books and the novelization of something What if someone writes a nonfiction piece about True crime, even if it's a crime they committed, which has happened, and people read that and profit off of that even more directly than a work of fiction.

And, and, you know, no one's, well, some people would say don't read that book. I'm sure it would be the same conversation, like if they don't. 

Elizabeth: There are a ton of people that do read those books. Yeah. [00:38:00] I mean, they're huge. 

Martha: Yeah, just more food for thought, and illustrating the point further that there's no clear cut answer.

This is really something that is personal, I think. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think you're right. It's personal and it seems like every situation that you come across. is an individual decision.

 Getting back to the Dederer article, she talks about the specific example of two films that Woody Allen made, Annie Hall versus Manhattan.

And Annie Hall is about two adults that are in a relationship and it's funny and it's existential in the way that Woody Allen is and it's a great movie. I think anyone could say. Manhattan, on the other hand, is. It's believed by many to be Woody Allen's masterpiece. But in the movie, a middle aged man, the character that Woody Allen plays, is in a sexual [00:39:00] relationship with a 17 year old girl.

So Dederer makes the point that, you know, how do you separate what this man actually is doing in his real life from the movie itself? And she feels like if you're going to criticize the film in the sense of being a film critic, that you have to talk about that, that to separate those two things, is irresponsible almost.

 With that example, she makes the point that often the people who are, the biggest advocates For always having that separation for judging art purely on the art itself and on the aesthetics alone are often the people who are the most privileged in that situation and have the ability to remain cool and objective because to put it frankly, they're men who aren't likely to [00:40:00] have those crimes committed against them like women and girls are.

And so. Yeah, that just problematizes it a little bit more, I think, in a way that, again, I don't have an answer to, but I think it's worth thinking about. 

Martha: Well, I like what you just said there, and it kind of rings true to me, just my personal opinion and experience, that maybe the question isn't about separating the art from the artist, because maybe we shouldn't.

Like Dederer said. Maybe it's more about a choice whether you're still going to read the book or consume the art while acknowledging the truth behind the artist. So, reflecting on the bad behavior and using it to think about the state of our society, the state of the world, how we could be better, where we've gone wrong, being a better person, while still [00:41:00] choosing whether or not we want to read the book, for our example.

So we're not separating the art from the artist. We know that we have to examine The bad behavior. We are forced to then reconcile with who these artists are if we choose to continue to consume their work.

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot. I think that that is it. Because It's good for us to think deeply about these things. To learn from history, to feel conflicted, to, understand that art is complicated, and that life is complicated, and the world is complicated. Yeah, I like that.

Because, you know you talking about how it helps us to learn from history also reminded me of, a related point to that is, there are some efforts, always, to take what's problematic out of the work, to censor it or to sanitize [00:42:00] it in some way, I think that the people who are doing that have good intentions, but then, I get into a question of, are we able to then learn from history, like you were just saying, and to grapple with these questions and to think deeply about them, if we just take, everything that we find offensive out, right?

And I would say no. and there are a lot of examples of this. Recently, the publisher that publishes Roald Dahl's book got into some hot water because they released his books With a bunch of things taken out or changed, whole paragraphs replaced. And it's not just cut and dry.

Roald Dahl has gotten a lot of criticism for things in his books that are definitely  antisemitic, that use, racial and sexual stereotypes. It's not to say that there aren't things in his books that are, wrong, but, they were changing things like changing a character being described as fat to being described as enormous.

And, there was one example where there was a paragraph in one of his [00:43:00] stories about witches being bald underneath their wigs that they inserted a new line saying there are plenty of reasons why women might wear wigs and there's nothing wrong with that. Right. So it's just sort of like, I mean, at that point.

 You're changing the work, right? If these books are so out of step with modern times, people won't read them anymore. Don't change the work to be something else. And, I mentioned Daniel Deronda earlier, and there have been lots of attempts since that book was published, especially with movie adaptations, to take out, the entire Jewish element of the plot and all the Jewish characters and just have it be what's left, which doesn't make any sense.

And, also on the other hand, in the 1800s there was even, a Jewish writer who suggested that the opposite be done with it and that they wanted to take out all the non Jewish parts. So it just is like, you know down that path madness lies. Yeah. We would just leave us.

[00:44:00] stupider, and it would doom us to repeat our mistakes, right? Which is why I started on this, on this point in the first place, because you were talking about learning from history, which I think is, is a really important piece of that.

And yeah, I can't claim at the end of this conversation to not be torn about this anymore, but I'm pretty swayed by the point that you made a few minutes ago about it being something that seemingly needs to be made by every individual and not just by every person, but for every specific situation.

And it reminds me of a part of  Dederer's essay. I know that I keep coming back to it, but I think it was just so good. I haven't read the book, but it's on my list. And it's basically just a longer treatment of what she began in this essay. But there's a part of her book As reported on by, another writer named Melissa Febos who wrote about the book in The New Yorker, where Dederer talks about having this fantasy of solving this question once and [00:45:00] for all of whether to consume the work of a person who is quote unquote monstrous or who we don't agree with, with a sort of calculator that could assess or weigh the heinousness of the crime against the greatness of the art and spit out a verdict that either you're allowed to consume the work of this artist still or you're not and she immediately acknowledges that that is clearly laughable and, and unthinkable. But I think that it's really important to underscore that point, that it's an individual decision, right? Because when you take it out of the hands of it being an individual decision, when you try to make a hard and fast rule that would work for everyone, that's where you get into that clownish territory of coming up with some type of point system or something. 

Martha: It just doesn't work. I mean, 

Elizabeth: It doesn't work. 

Martha: The easiest way I can relate to this or give an illustration for this point is, you know we all know my relationship with Harry Potter [00:46:00] and how I feel about that, and I'm still reading those books.. 

Elizabeth: And I don't really, feel super strongly about the Harry Potter books, even though now I do want to listen to the Jim Dale audiobook after hearing about it from you.

But, you know, if you were to put on a Michael Jackson song, especially after I've had a drink or two, am I dancing to that song? Yes. Absolutely. Because, that was my childhood. That's my era. And so, does that mean that I was not, disturbed by some of the things that we learned later in Michael Jackson's life?

No. I was. And both of those things can be true. And this is also , something that Dederer talks about, which is, part of her theory that she arrives at is that the more formative, it's basically exactly what you just said, but just to underscore it, the more formative the art was for you, so for her Woody Allen movies and, [00:47:00] Roman Polanski movies, the more formative it was for you, the more comfortable you are with putting aside what you know about the person who created it and just consuming it and loving it for itself. And for people who that's not the case, they might have an easier time just not consuming that art. And something else that Dederer talks about that, not only is your own personal experience with how formative the art was for you at play here, but your experiences in life are also at play. A quote from the Febos essay, is that Dederer sees every encounter with a work of art as a potential clash between two biographies, the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art, and the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art.

So, if you are someone who is a survivor of sexual assault or sexual abuse, you might have less tolerance for, Watching Roman [00:48:00] Polanski movies, or for reading Lolita, or any of these other examples that we've talked about.

Martha: it makes so much sense in our context, because we've already talked about how no two readers, read the same book.

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Martha: And the same goes for this conversation. Our experience in our life, just like , you just said, is gonna shape our reaction to the book, or the work of art. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. I was laughing because you were the one to bring up Nancy Pearl this time,

Martha: oh, Nancy!! 

Elizabeth: But yeah, exactly, no two readers read the same book. I think that that is, that really is what it comes down to. This feels like a good place for us to end because that is also really in line with the whole philosophy of this podcast, is We shouldn't be shaming other people for what they read, we shouldn't be judging them, 

And vice versa, right? I mean, if someone doesn't want to read something for whatever reason, that is [00:49:00] obviously also absolutely fine. Think about our second episode where we are talking about not finishing books for, much less serious reasons than we're talking about in this episode. So yeah, if you don't want to read a book, like, no, no one has to read a book.

 Reading is personal and you should do , what feels right for you, what's good for you, which is not to say that there's no morals in this conversation because I think we just spent the better part of an hour talking about how there are morals here, and it doesn't justify someone's behavior just because you choose to keep consuming their art, it is something that, is an individual decision, and, I think that I can say we both think isn't something that other people should be judging or shaming one another for, because you just can't make that rule for other people, you can't make it for anyone but yourself.

Martha: Right. I agree 100%. And instead of trying to separate the art from the artist, let's reflect on What it means. [00:50:00] 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I really like that. We don't have to actually answer this question. We don't have to separate it. We can grapple with it. We can think about how hard it is. And I think that makes us better to think deeply about these things.

Martha: I agree. That's how we'll progress . 

Elizabeth: And Dederer's bottom line on this is, love what you love. It doesn't excuse anyone. Both things can be true at once. We can hold those truths at once. 

Martha: Well, thanks, Liz. I think this is the perfect place to wrap up and sign off for this episode, I think everyone who listened should definitely check out the show notes and read  Dederer's article.

And we're not trying to have the final word on this conversation. If there is anything that we didn't cover or you have a different perspective or take you the listener. On this topic, please feel free to send us an email. To continue this discussion, it's allbooksaloudpod@gmail. com.[00:51:00] 

And make sure you follow us on social media, @allbooksaloudpod. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And read on, my friends.

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