Judging writers by their writing, or their private lives

In the Guardian, Lionel Shriver raises a good point in connection with the late literary titan Norman Mailer: It's time for Mailer's ghost to rest in peace. Excerpt:

Critics are divided on whether literature should be analysed through the prism of the writer's life and psyche or should be read without reference to its author purely in its own terms. I would like to vote for Plan B.

Harvard University is going for A. Its library missed out on the papers of its illustrious alumnus Norman Mailer, who sold them to the University of Texas while still alive in 2005, including numerous novel typescripts, what in publishing goes by the wonderfully redolent name 'foul matter'. So Harvard has bought the papers of Mailer's lover instead.

In North America, the manuscript of a published novel is called "dead matter," but I take the point.

Shriver raises an issue all writers ought to think about. Many writers are more famous for their private lives than their public utterances.

Mailer, of course, marketed himself as much as he promoted his books. So did most of his contemporaries, and they were just following in the footsteps of the previous generation.

More people know Scott Fitzgerald for his Jazz Age revels, and his insane wife Zelda, than have read The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. Dashiell Hammett was an ex-private eye, the lover-mentor of Katherine Hellman, a drunk, and a political prisoner; more people know that than have read his stories about the Continental Op.

Mailer's reputation survived the stigma of stabbing his wife, but Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, internationally successful, became internationally despised when he supported the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II. Some people can't or won't read Atlas Shrugged because they know too much about Ayn Rand's private life, or detest her philosophy and politics.

The issue really has two aspects: Should we read (or shun) a writer because of his or her sexual behaviour, financial problems, or alcoholism? And should we read writers whose political views are in line with ours, and ignore those whose politics disgust us?

When I read Fitzgerald, or Malcolm Lowry, or any other writer with a complicated private life, what I know about that life makes me marvel that the author got anything written at all. I may also understand why alcohol, for example, is a big issue in such writers' work. That at least makes me think about the talent required to write under such disabilities.

But I hope I can still read their work as literature, just as I would read a novel by an author I didn't know anything about. I want to judge The Great Gatsby as a vision of 1920s America, not just a tarted-up diary of Scott and Zelda's lives. And I want to understand the storytelling that Fitzgerald put into his novel, so I can make my own work a little better.

As for authors' political background, I know it's going to influence the kind of story they tell, but I try not to let it get in the way of my reading. Every novel is anecdotal evidence for the author's vision of the way the world works, and that vision will certainly reflect the author's politics.

So I can read Robert Heinlein, for example, and love his stories while rolling my eyes at his bizarre political views. His world is a great place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. And in any case, his politics reflect Heinlein's era, not our own.

Similarly, I can read Jack London's The Iron Heel, a lurid vision of a capitalist tyranny, and groan at this supposed socialist's fear and horror of the American working class. But I remind myself that "presentism" is a vice: We simply can't impose our modern values on the writers of a century ago.

(There's a story idea, by the way: Someone in the early 22nd century, studying the barbarous values smugly held by the ignorant and benighted savages living in the early 21st century.)

We know frustratingly little about William Shakespeare's private life, but his plays and poems stand up very well regardless. So I'm with Lionel Shriver's Plan B: Judge a piece of writing on its own terms, and for the light it throws on your own private life—not on the author's.

Comments

[Shelli]

Often I read books without knowing anything about the author. If I really love the book, it makes me want to learn about the writer, yet I try to appreciate the work whether I admire the person's private life or not.

[Richard Bramwell]

What a nice post Mr. Killian. Thank-you for not hewing to the usual politically correct crowd.

I read a book first for its own merits as I can grasp them. Then, as with the other visual arts, I get interested in the author's life and motivations.

It is not always true that events in the author's life detract from the brilliance of their work. In fact sometimes the brilliance of their work has me questioning the popular interpretations of reported events in their private life.

For example, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged can be read a half dozen times, and the thinking reader will discover deeper and deeper meanings in her choice of events and words. Then, on hearing purportedly lurid details of her private life, one wonders how she could have done such things. One or more 'second thoughts' then has one wondering how someone could have sought to dupe such an amazing mind.

As a victim of a female version of Nathaniel Branden, I can say that I appreciate Rand's anger and grief at such betrayal. Had the Branden 'thing' gone further, I am confident that she would have taken the morally proper steps.

Yet, to the shame of lesser minds, they presume her literary work to be tainted because of the nature of her private life for which they have insufficient understanding to condemn, let alone apply to her written work.

In that sense, her written work speaks of a brilliant author, regardless of peoples' confusions over her private life.