Why Judge the Writers?

I’ve never understood this obsession many have with evaluating a writer’s personal life. Like it has any relation to their work.

With a new Tintin movie ready for release (The Adventures of Tintin), the latest guy to get judged in this manner is Hergé. For his collaboration with the Nazis. And for writing a very racist Tintin (Tintin in the Congo). So much so, that they don’t even show it on the list of Tintin books anymore! So have people stopped buying Tintin’s for their kids, to voice their protest? No, but that doesn’t stop them from criticizing him.

Others like to bring up Wodehouse’s broadcasts on behalf of the Nazis. Did that make his novels less funny? Do you laugh less at Bertie Wooster’s crazy adventures because of that? Does it make his language any less brilliant?

Or take the endless discussions as to who wrote Shakespeare’s works. One author or multiple authors, would we quote Shakespeare (knowingly or unknowingly) any less for that? It seems such an idiotic topic.

Besides, a writer indulging in some cruel act or supporting an evil ideology is not the same as a Pope shielding pedophile priests. A writer writes, he doesn’t claim to be the most moral or just person on the planet. So why judge the writers on anything other than what they wrote?

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 29, 2011 at 9:41 AM

    The way you have presented the picture may not be the wholesome picture.

    Leaving aside low-class literature (those which are no more than time-pass trash, in general literature has to have what is termed as "morality". This is not the religious morality; this is what the litterateur expressed as the "way of the right". (Even when an atheist writes good literature, which they often do, there will be this "literary morality". This is not like some religious prophet preaching morality, but an inner experience of right by a human being. Usually, in religious morality, your evaluation of the preached morality is denied and blind belief encouraged. In literary morality, your sense of direction will be the guiding factor.) In this way, if Tintin becomes racist, then a voice is necessarily needed to stand up against it. Because thousands of young readers will tend towards racist ideas. Bad for the society. Like modern TV and newspapers planting seeds of violence in people, comics can also do harm. As to the author's Nazi collaboration, I can concede, it can be treated as an independent issue with regard to Tintin development; but nobody needs to be spared of the bad image due to linkage with or support to Nazism. Why should Tintin author be an exception, just because Tintins are generally good comics?

    While one can agree with you on PG Wodehouse's humor being fully independent of the broadcast that he agreed to do for the Nazis, the point at that time was that, "Why did he do it?" I can surely see the disgust the British would experience for such a thing, what they thought of as 'betrayal'. Though the controversy was never settled, UK didn't ban his books subsequently or continued to speak ill of him. Actually he got knighted, if I am not mistaken. I still do not believe what PGW did was proper. Silly of him. There was no need for him to have done what he did. Opinions apart, don't you see what you say was what happens actually. People read PGW for what he wrote, not all the time do they think about his broadcast.

    In this sense, people do act the way of your prescription. Jeffry Archer became a criminal and got imprisoned. He needed to be punished by the law which surely happened. Good. But his book sales continued as before.

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