By Kinshuk Gupta
The seams of Alice Munro’s life, the author of Dear Life—who sketched girls and women in dazzling, electrifying details, making us aware of the little secret annexes of their hearts—came undone after her daughter’s recent confession. Andrea Skinner, while writing for the Toronto Star, condemned her mother’s disturbing silence after the truth about childhood abuse by her stepfather and Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, was disclosed. It seems that Munro was more affected by her husband’s infidelity than her daughter’s plea for help. But that is the truth that we can concoct through a careful (and subjective) assembling of facts—the other side of it, rendered unavailable by Munro’s death. Was Munro, who advocated a self-care regime for women and mothers, herself an oppressive matriarch that Skinner had to wait for so long?
What is interesting, though, is that the entire extended family, even Munro’s editor and biographer, decided to gloss over the truth. What then explains our anger directed only toward her? Is it because of her fame, her Noble, or that she failed to abide by the socially accepted mores of being a mother or a writer? It is almost like knowing a dark secret about your lover. But when a lover’s image changes, does the love for them change, or worse, dissolve like a disprin?
As Munro chose between her love for her husband and her responsibility towards her daughter, we, as readers, stand at a similar crossroads: can we quickly condemn the work of art that has moved us, informed us, and changed the way we engage with the world after a sting has been performed on the artist’s life? Can we box them separately, or do we consider them as a continuum—the artist’s life distilled into their prose? If it is the latter, then in what way? Do we think of it as an extension of their sinistrous self or their guilty self fighting off the monsters haunting them for not accepting the truth? In this present world, where the ubiquity of social media has taken over, such questions are bound to crop up time and again.
To me, as a reader who has gone over and over again to Munro for comfort, it’s the rupture of an idealistic, benign image that makes a writer: one who has the courage to speak up, fight the duality, and imagine a more equitable world. The world taking precedence over the self. But in my limited experience, meeting a writer has failed to add another dimension to their work; instead, it has distorted it. That way, Elena Ferrante fans have a privilege. I personally stick to Eunice D’Souza’s advice: Best to meet [a poet] in a poem.
Six other writers and scholars delve into a similar question.
Savita Singh, author of Vasna Ek Nadi Ka Naam Hai
Reflecting on the nature of the embeddedness of art in our lives and society, it is reasonable to accept that artists & writers need a certain kind of critical distance from the societies they live in, but this only to understand more critically and deeply the condition of their writing. Liberals define it as writer’s autonomy- crucial for writing or art – but the purpose of writing is not to create an artifact, or a piece of literary marvel sealed off from the effects it should have on our social conditions. Rather, the purpose of writing is to transform the condition of our social and political lives, particularly if they are oppressive and exploitative. Writer’s lives ultimately become a mirror of self-reflection through critical engagement, unable to hide their own images from themselves. Writing is a constant struggle undertaken by a writer to obtain a state of being in which harmony is achieved between the desire for a happy and beautiful, good life which requires establishing justice. And this often inheres a steely struggle to transform both the societies in which we live, simultaneously and our own. If our writing does not change us, then it fails. In my view seeking autonomy from one’s writing, and the larger social responsibilities that come with it, is illusionary and seeped in bad faith; it emanates from the forgetfulness of one’s own being.
Women writers struggle in a more complex way as they constantly live within capitalist patriarchy, opposed and opposing it. The contradiction of motherhood is produced by the same patriarchal system which does not allow them to be whole beings. She bleeds either way – as a mother and as a female person- for she is oppressed in both roles. For a man, however, to be a misogynist and to be such a writer, does produce contradiction, but this is one of the dominant types of men patriarchy shapes into existence. Masculinity and femininity need to be understood to be able to critically reflect on the autonomy of art and the artist in the world today. In the kind of oppressive society we live in, we need not have autonomy within as writers. It is clear more than ever now that writing aims to liberate both the writer and the society.
Ashok Vajpeyi, author of Ab Yahan Nahin
We are living in times when many facts of the life of an artist or a writer can be easily known. The number of peeping toms has multiplied many times. Artists and writers are basically human beings and as fallible, and vulnerable as any other. While a lot of creative imagination emanates from the life and lived experiences of an artist or writer the finished works of art and literature attain both independence from them and assume autonomy. These autonomous works are read, enjoyed, asserted, critiqued, etc. The facts and failures, lapses and gaps of lived life are ordinarily not relevant in understanding the works. To put any artist or writer on a high moral pedestal and then to make him or her fall from there on the ground of some lately revealed facts seems to be a sensational exercise. It does not help towards a better or more nuanced understanding of the works. Ultimately such attempts never succeed in damaging the status or significance of the creative work.
There are cases when posthumously discovered facts about of lives of several acknowledged masters namely Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Neruda, Paul de Mann, nearer home Nagarjun, etc, for instance, have no doubt created an ethos of doubt and disbelief. They have caused outrage and anger, disappointment and disbelief. However, the creative works have survived both in interest and significance. The imperfect can and do attain perfection in art and literature. The immoral can create and explore the undiminishable core of the irrepressible moral, the bored and exhausted can express delight, and the condemned can reach enlightenment.
Mridula Garg, author of Ve Nayaab Aurtein
There is no excuse for any human being, man or woman, great writer or not for turning a blind eye to sexual assault even on an adult female, if the male falsely terms it consensual, as Neil Gaiman did. Much more horrifying is a Nobel Laureate writer like Alice Munro ignoring the plea for help by a child against sexual abuse by a grown man. That the victim was her daughter and the perpetrator, her husband makes it worse because she was bound by moral justice to protect her. Her studied silence about his subjecting other children to the same horror makes her truly brutal. No writer can be excused for that, not even a genius at her art.
My horror is fuelled by the fact that paedophilia is rampant amongst “iconic and revered writers” in India. But when presented with the accusation of abuse by the children, now grown-up, the literary community shrugs indifferently and chants,” Why didn’t she complain then!” She did, Sir, but her parents shushed her; called her a liar; heaped contempt on her; continued to welcome the molester. How was a little child to fight that! Though known to most people, when I take the name of one such perpetrator, all hell will break loose. The name is Baba Nagarjun, iconic revolutionary writer/poet, known also as a caring companion and lover of children. Can there be a greater transgression than portraying sexual abuse of innocents as benign love?
Nadeem Zaman, author of The Inheritors
I don’t know that there is, or can be, or ought to be, one catchall way of addressing the matter of separating the art from the artist, and vice versa. Everything is ultimately personal. How we react to allegations of artists and their behavior, I believe, can be as deeply felt as though they were people close to us, that betrayed us, that shocked us with things we never knew about them. The difference is that in a personal relationship, I can make certain decisions that will, could, have an immediate effect. When it’s a world-famous artist, my personal feelings won’t change the trajectory of their career, – whether they’re dead or alive – and neither will my indignation cause them to see some light and repent. My feelings and actions will remain my own. The only difference will come about when a collective voice puts the people and the issues center-stage, and even then, I imagine, we will be a chorus of fans, readers, and admirers looking to each other for answers, validations, and perhaps even knock heads over the fundamental question: do we cancel the artist from our lives or separate them from their work?
I doubt there will ever be a unanimous consensus. An online tribunal and figurative execution is not a solution. If anything, I’ve only seen such ineffective and counterproductive echo chambers spiral into sounding like demented right-wing spaces. I’m heartened by the fact that survivors of abuse and harm are coming forward, that they’re given platforms, and are breaking down taboos and not being shamed to silence.
Rohit Manchanda, author of The Enclave
Predator and prey: an equation as old as the first stirrings of biological life. Those more powerful have forever made the weaker their quarry, in one way or another. The human endeavour to “civilise” ourselves has sought to do away with such iniquities, but here and there we revert to our antediluvian selves. Two such instances have recently come to light, and the disquieting thing about them is that the perpetrators, or their allies – Neil Gaiman, Alice Munro – are the types who are often held up as epitomes of the finer, rather than crasser, sensibilities.
What these episodes tell me, more than anything else, is that humankind’s basest impulses are rooted remarkably deep in its psyche, and that the best-cultivated patina of artistic sensitivity isn’t proof to being ruptured by those baser impulses. In Munro’s case, it’s tragedy redoubled in that she who was meant to protect and shield her child went rogue, turning into an abetter and an apologist for assault and abuse – and in no higher interest than of her own besottment with the molester. One is left helpless against bemoaning how very distant the human mind still is, for all its varied attainments, of a sound sense of the fair and the just, to say nothing of empathy for a stricken child, that too one’s own. Where does the remedy lie? Could it lie only, alas, at that faraway point where our species’ collective brain evolves into a more humane version of its present self? I’m hard put to say; one can only hope it kicks in a great deal sooner than that!
Nusrat F. Jafri, author of This Land We Call Home
When we build infallible icons in our minds, we make ourselves most vulnerable to their eventual failings. Artists are flawed even as we search for an eventual truth in their works. But it is a lie that we are telling ourselves. It’s true that we look for perfect lives, perfect answers to our common lives in the words and works of artists we remember, but this search for perfection is ultimately unattainable.
Waking up to the news about some of our favourite icons, whether it’s Munro, Gaiman, or Woody Allen or Tarun Tejpal, our initial reaction is almost always one of profound disappointment. We feel betrayed, as if these individuals have let us down. This disappointment can quickly turn into detachment. We might try to distance ourselves from the source of our disillusionment, learning (though often forgetting just as quickly) that we continually seek an escape from our own imperfect worlds by looking for perfection and truth in others.
I understand that it’s possible to separate the art from the artist. I can still appreciate the works of these artists while acknowledging their flaws. However, whether I can consistently practice this separation is something I will have to discover for myself. It’s a delicate balance between enjoying the art and accepting the imperfections of its creator, and finding this balance is a personal journey.
Forgiveness–can I ever forgive an artist for being a horrible human being? No, maybe never.
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