Writers aren't heroes
Don't expect all artists and writers to make the right moral choice
I’ve read parts of that Cormac McCarthy article about his relationship with a woman that started when she was a teenager.
Honestly, I wasn’t terribly surprised. It’s not like I knew the details of that relationship or something, I’m not even a fan of McCarthy (I’ve only read The Road and Blood Meridian looms from my own bookshelf), it’s just that I’m not surprised that another writer is not the person we thought him to be.
I also wasn’t surprised when I went to the Guggenheim the other day and read that the painter Toulouse-Lautrec spent a lot of time in brothels.
Or that Woody Allen isn’t a good person, even though we’ve known that for a while.
I was, however (and I don’t know why I should have been…), mildly surprised ten years ago when the writing scene I was tangentially related to essentially imploded with allegations and instances of grooming and rape.
In that case, I wasn’t in the group texts and messages of people several years younger than me, and I rarely spoke to those writers. I just dealt with and read their work, even when it was kinda-sorta related to those topics (eek).
Yes, some of their work was problematic if you read it as reality—I didn’t.
I took them at their word (a mistake?) and read it as fiction.
Just because something described in fiction could happen in real life doesn’t mean it has.
That’s fiction.
I don’t think George Lucas actually went to Tatooine or that J.R.R. Tolkien had been a hobbit. I also don’t assume Agatha Christie committed a dozen murders just because she wrote about them. Or that Dr. Seuss personally saw a cat in a hat wreck someone’s house.
Or that an action movie really does blow up the Statue of Liberty.
Or that Margot Robbie is in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, or Emile Hirsch.
Rightly or wrongly, I let the art stand for itself, regardless of the author’s background or intention. 1
The work stands on its own.
This is called New Criticism in lit theory.
From Brittanica (not authoritative, but a good summary):
New Criticism, post-World War I school of Anglo-American literary critical theory that insisted on the intrinsic value of a work of art and focused attention on the individual work alone as an independent unit of meaning. It was opposed to the critical practice of bringing historical or biographical data to bear on the interpretation of a work.
I’m not perfect at this, but it’s generally how I like to approach work.
I’m not surprised when authors do something bad and I don’t condone it—but I can still appreciate the work they’ve created (if I want…it doesn’t mean I have to be an apologist for their work either).
However, this is harder to do in the “autofiction” space or with semi-autobiographical works, when the artist’s personal context is essential or when they’re clearly referencing real events (like the lit scene I was involved in or with a lot of Woody Allen’s work).
This becomes messier in autofiction, where the line between real and imaginary is deliberately blurred. It’s one thing to read Catcher in the Rye and see reflections of Salinger’s reclusive personality.
The closer the writer pulls you to their real life, the harder it is to separate the two.
This doesn’t always have to be bad—I can take a miscommunication at a grocery store in Nashville, set it in California or on another planet, and turn it into a story about getting a spaceship fixed at a mechanic.
That’s inspiration for a story.
Maybe my problem is…
that I don’t know who fans expected these people to be in the first place.
Art is about breaking the rules, so if you encourage people to “write what they know,” and what they know isn’t good, what do you expect?
I don’t think that’s good advice, by the way, not at face value.
I also think it’s fine to emulate a work of art by a famous artist or writer without emulating their life or their lifestyle choices.
Let me be clear:
Writers and artists can have a moral life while also being granted the liberty to write about things they wouldn’t necessarily do themselves.
Yes, that could involve sex, violence, and bad, immoral choices.
Some writers are more comfortable writing about those topics than I am, but I’m not the standard for literature (lol).
What I’m saying is this: separating the art from the artist matters because it preserves the work’s ability to speak for itself.
That’s why you can appreciate a Toulouse-Lautrec painting without needing to like Toulouse-Lautrec himself or buy prints of all of his paintings and infinitely celebrate it forever and ever.
From a Christian perspective…
From a Christian perspective (I’ll write more about this later), this tension makes sense.
Christianity wrestles with the balance between truth, beauty, and brokenness all the time (yes, even in the Bible). The best art often does the same—it reflects life’s beauty while acknowledging its darkness. Sometimes, beauty has to go through darkness to be fully seen, and that’s okay to express.
But maybe the real problem is expecting artists to be heroes in the first place.
Writers don’t need to be saints to write meaningful stories.
Writers and artists are not heroes—maybe they never were, and maybe they never should be2. Their job isn’t to live morally perfect lives but to tell the stories that matter, even when they’re messy.
We can learn from their mistakes while appreciating the beauty they create, flawed as it may be.
Keep going-
-Josh Spilker
Intentional Fallacy is a good lit theory essay on this
Not mutually exclusive! Saints can be good writers. (Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard)
Well said. Thank you for this.