Finding out people we admire are human

Last week I read Alice Munro. Note, I didn’t reread her, I read her.

She has been on my To Read list for a long time, but for some reason she never made it to the top until now. I’m sure many of you know why.

The short of it, as I have seen it reported in the news, is that Munro’s estranged youngest daughter recently (after Munro’s death earlier this year) shared her story of being sexually assaulted by her stepfather when she was nine. He was later convicted of this crime. Reportedly, Munro distanced herself from her daughter after the daughter told her of the abuse, choosing her husband over her daughter.

Now, I know I was hardly neutral in writing that last paragraph, because that is hard stuff. Hard to hear, hard to write, and I can only imagine how hard it was to live. There is zero chance everyone reading this will be okay with where I go with this from here.

The truth is, I go nowhere. I wander around with knowledge like this like it’s a marble on a board leading me.

I want to be able to separate a person from their work. No I don’t.

Can you even do that? I have found—for me—that answer is no. And how I manage that is oh, so messy.

I have little personal rules that are in constant flux: I won’t financially support artists who, it’s been proven, have done things I find egregious. Look at all the waffling in that sentence.

But like the rule of hearsay in law, it’s a law that has been gutted by its exceptions. If the artist is dead and I’m no longer supporting them, but their heirs, I can support them (because building a postmortem legacy doesn’t count). If they are just rumors and not proven, I can support them (because the law always gets everything right and victims are always heard). If I never hear about it, I can support them (goodbye biopics).

But no matter how much I dance around the issue to make it fit between my conscience, my rage, and my interests, these people damage themselves. There will always be that little mental asterisk next to their name for me.

Take Munro. I would be lying if I said I didn’t really admire her stories. But, I could only now read them through the lens of what I have heard. So I’m not going in innocently, enjoying the stories for themselves alone, as many have done. Now I see the dark shadows in the corners…where some of the ideas may have come from…the emotions and history the writer brought to them. It was…different. I recognized the difference even as I read them.

I should say, I also read Bukowski last week, but knowing his…shall we say…questionable qualities didn’t have much or any impact on how I read his writing. Does that mean his is more honest because it’s his honesty?

No. Yes. Ugh.