At the base of every major work of art is a pile of barbarism.- Walter Benjamin
Do you find that you can't enjoy the work of an author as much once you find out that he or she was a terrible person, or did something you vehemently disagreed with during the course of his or her lifetime? I guess it wouldn't matter for many people, since all the jerk things they did are lost to time (nobody's ever like "yeah, Homer was blind, but did you know that he HATED KITTENS?"), but let's say we're talking about someone that is almost universally beloved - for example, while browsing, I noticed that in a post on children's authors, many people mentioned Roald Dahl as a favorite. I loved - and still love - some of this work, but I really can't love it as much as I used to because I know that he was a pretty terrible dude in a lot of ways:
(I'm a new member, so I can't post hyperlinks, but Google "Roald Dahl" and "thisrecording" to find the article I quote below - or send me a message and I'll send you the link that way)
What do you think? I get the whole critical theory/Roland Barthes' Death of the Author angle, but I mean in a more general, less pretentiously academic-y way... does it bother you on a personal level, to the point where you enjoy the work less (if at all)? Does it make a difference if you know that this author's "cause" was more personal (for example, if you are Jewish, but an author whose work you admire turns out to be very much anti-Semitic)? Does it matter if the author is living or dead?Everyone knows Roald Dahl's last novel Matilda, his seemingly pro-female examination of a talented young girl oppressed by the provincialism of her parents. What they usually do not know is that the original draft of the book painted the protagonist as a devilish little hussy who only later becomes "clever", perhaps because she found herself without very much to do after torturing her parents. Dahl's editor Stephen Roxburgh completely revised Dahl's last novel and, in doing so, turned it into his most popular book.