Category: Big Questions

Burying authors we loved.

I have not drawn any conclusions and do not want to engage in a debate, good faith or otherwise, about this topic of problematic authors. I would wager there isn’t one of us who hasn’t had to wrestle with our better or lesser angels regarding our “heroes.”

Grief is a complex emotion.

And when it comes to art and the artist, grief can look like apologies or giving grace so we, the audience, consumers, or appreciators of the art, can move through it with a recycled conscious.

Edgar Allan Poe was a hot mess. There are many well-done and crafted documentaries about him, and since I am a fan-girl adjacent to his works, I’ve watched most of them. I’m sharing this one because it illustrates clearly the mystery of his death. (And, when I tell students he married his 13-year-old cousin, the reaction is immediate, “Ewww!”

Poe died on October 7, 1849. I ‘celebrated’ this by instructing students in close reading and discussions about “The Cask of Amontillado.” Yes, a story with one of the most incorrigible ‘unreliable narrators’ and the unfortunate Fortunato. I adore Poe’s works, and I have made it very clear to my students that I didn’t pop out of the reader’s box knowing how to understand his prose. It’s taken me years of study, re-reading, researching, and discussing. In fact, I shared with them I spent the better part of hour trying to understand fully what this quote means:

 I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

Edgar Allan Poe

(By the way, dear reader, if you’re this far into this post, congratulations. You’ve entered my procrasti-writing zone where I am anxious about getting to the point.)

(And Montresor may have failed in his purpose of letting Fortunato know what he did wrong.) If Poe had been a modern writer, he would have been ridiculed, censored, and mocked on every social media platform. Marrying a child cousin is a big ick. And I still love his writing and works. I am not an expert but simply a dilettante. His works are so fun to teach because students can discover the throughlines of his thematic messages relatively easily, even if the language is archaic. They get it.

And they also used to get another author whose works I shared frequently, and I don’t have to translate (much) to modern English: Neil Gaiman.

And I am mourning him.

Yes, I believe what he did to harm women was egregious. I struggle to bring myself to read the reports. It seems he, like so many other men in positions of privilege, power, and opportunity, used his position to sexually harm women.

I have loved his writing for decades, and I have recommended his books. I’ve seen him speak two times, and his soft British voice lulls me to a comforting sleep. American Gods brought the epitome of mythology, religion, new world orders, and anthropomorphic gods to life. Coraline brought monstrous mothers with button eyes that we all face. Good Omens not only gave me a delightful view of angels and devils, co-written with the incomparable Terry Pratchett, but then an amazing series to watch, which is magnificent. But now all those people: the actors, writers, producers, set designers, etc., are out of a job. And for years, I used The Graveyard Book as a mentor text for one of the best first sentences in a novel, ever:

There is a short story I used to use occasionally because it was a great mentor text for word choice and writer’s craft, “Chivalry.”

“Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.”
― Neil Gaiman, Chivalry

When we need to speak of authors in the past tense, to go from “love” to “loved,” we share a piece of ourselves that is dead, hurt, and aching. The whimsical feelings of epic fantasy and immersion have grave dirt and cemetery stones weighing our memories down, desecrating and defiling them.

I, as a reader, can never know the pain, shame, and horror the women he harmed know.

And this is just a thought exploration: JKR calls for death and harm to thousands of people. She defiled the Harry franchise for millions of us. Nazis did this, too. She is a TERF fascist. And there are dozens of authors who destroyed their reputation and the value of their literary skill with harmful acts: some toward their own children (Munro), some with harm similar to Gaiman (Alexie), and so many others. This is not their funeral, though, this eulogy is for Gaiman. And I don’t even want to get into Mists of Avalon.

I am going to consider this benediction from the American Library Association, however, when trying to reconcile my own reading experiences with the authors.

This one hurts, Neil. Your authorial death hurts. I’m sure in 50, 100, 150 years if students read your works and are just as confused as mine are when they read Poe and Shakespeare, they will come to love your stories as I did, and because of the passing of time, they can disregard your human flaws. For now, you’re mentally chained up behind a wall, with a motley crown echoing jingling bells in memory.

Footnotes:

Yes, I spent five minutes relearning how to do proper quotation marks.