On the Disposition of Writers

Posted 14 April, 2008 in Writing Life |

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Mordecai Richler during one of his very infrequent teaching gigs. Richler was somehow finagled into teaching a summer course at the Humber School for Writers, and on the first day (so the story goes) Joe Kertes, who administered the program, walked past Richler’s classroom and observed the professor sitting on a window sill gazing out at the sky while his students sat in uncomfortable silence. Poking his head in the room, Kertes is said to have uttered cheerfully, “Well, shall we get started?” At which point Richler turned his head and said, “What would be the point?”

Whether this story is true or not is immaterial: it might as well be. Richler was, by all accounts, a fairly prickly sort who didn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. He had a pronounced cruel streak, and wasn’t afraid to cut someone off at the knees if he felt they deserved it.

The question is: does this make a reader less inclined to like his writing? According to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, it should. Writing in the Evening Standard, Alibhai-Brown explains why she will never again buy a book by acclaimed novelist V.S. Naipaul:

Patrick French has just published an unflinchingly honest biography of Nobel prize-winning writer VS Naipaul, who comes across as unpleasant and stuffed with conceit. That, I guess, is true of many other authors, too. But Naipaul is exceptionally malevolent, a man without grace or humanity, sadistic to those who have dared to love him. So why do we tolerate such behaviour in writers?

This is a peculiar, and all too prevalent, brand of literary dilettantism that makes my blood boil. By all accounts (not just French’s), Naipaul is not a very nice man. But what does the fact that he is “unpleasant and stuffed with conceit” have to do with his artistic output? The obvious answer to this rhetorical question is: precisely nothing.

It has always astounded me that certain people think that those who create art must of necessity be paragons of virtue and decency. No doubt some of them are. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, was an inveterate gambler. Philip Van Doren Stern refers to Edgar Allen Poe as a “charlatan, plagiarist, pathological liar, whimpering child, egomaniac, braggart, and irresponsible drunkard.” Ezra Pound was an anti-Semite. Kingsley Amis was a serial adulterer.

So freaking what?

The truth is that many great artists were — and are — reprehensible human beings. The two are not incompatible. It is perfectly possible to feel “contempt” for a writer and still admire that person’s writing. The art and the artist are discrete entities, and each should be judged on its own merits.

3 comments to “On the Disposition of Writers”

Dustin, April 16th, 2008 at 11:03 am:

• Its the same sort of projection that makes some people think that athletes and actors should help them raise their children by “setting a good example”… and what if someone told us that Alibhai-Brown didn’t recycle - does that mean we shouldn’t listen to her opinion of Naipaul? Well, now I’ve left a comment. Watch you don’t step on it. Or in it.

Zachariah Wells, April 16th, 2008 at 2:37 pm:

• Seems to me there’s a flipside to this, that a lot of writers’ abilities get over-estimated because they’re known to be swell folk.

heather (errantdreams), April 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 am:

• I don’t expect writers to be any better than other people, but I admit that if one of them particularly annoys me I’m unlikely to want to add to their bank account by purchasing their books. It’s no different than any other form of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is: there are plenty of people who avoid certain stores or manufacturers because of their policies or politics. I don’t see this as being any different.

  That said, I’m not scouring the ‘net to make sure the writers of the books I read are decent people, and I doubt anyone else is either. Most of the time it isn’t going to make a difference. But if someone dislikes an author for whatever reason, whether that reason is the author’s skill, personality, or politics, it’s the reader’s right to not want to contribute to that author’s royalty checks, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

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