So for some reason or another, I was thinking about Ezra Pound. Heard of him? Unless you are an English major, probably not. HECK I was an English major and I'd be hard pressed to recall ANYTHING old Ezra wrote. The only thing I DO remember is he was a racist asshole and they stopped teaching about him when the truth came out
Fair? Probably not, but I think he just fell out of favor. Maybe his works just lost their shine. I probably should see if I can wade through any of his writing before I say much more in his defense.
My mind went over to Laura Ingalls Wilder, who earlier this year had an award named after her experience a name change to the Children's Literature Legacy Award. HER crime? Repeating in her stories what her MOTHER had said about the Native Americans in her area. Hear me out here. SHE is being charged with racism, essentially being punished for relating in her books the moré of the time that is CERTAINLY wrong, but it was what people thought. So, she is being punished, in a sense, for relating history. Should we stop reading Mark Twain for the same reason? How about William Faulkner? Laura was not saying this was right and I think it gives us a talking point with kids who may read it and question it, if they do at all. Ma was kind of a minor character in the books, they were more about Pa. Still I think that the presences of Ma's bias- that was really a product of her time and environment and while it is was and always will be WRONG- was something from that time period and we shouldn't erase it and prettify the time by pretending it wasn't there.
I think Laura herself got a bad shake after she died when her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, intimated that SHE, not her mother, was the author of those books which were based on her mother's recollections. I think Laura and Rose had a bad relationship and Rose was jealous of her mother's success. I tried to read Rose's book. It was NOT good, and I believe totally disproves the "I wrote the Little House Books" claim that Rose made.
But back to my original thought. Do we separate the dancer from the dance? Do we talk about works of art independent of the artist? Or do we dismiss talent because of flawed character?
As a former children's librarian, I am certainly o board with you. Two author of repute that were essentially rewritten (one by a relative!) were Hugh Lofting of Dr. Doolittle fame, and P.L. Travers of Mary Poppins fame. They had to be rewritten and sanitized to make them more palatable for today's PC kids - who probably don't care. In fact, all this preciously self-conscious (AKA smug self-righteous virtue) make me irritable. You know, when I was a kid I read a loved Little Black Sambo, and don't remember thinking badly about people of color because of it. In fact, for some reason, I knew the little boy was Indian, not African. Mostly I was fascinated by the way the tiger ran so fast he turned into butter. And, yes, Robyn, I am sure somewhere there is a movement to get rid of Mark Twain.
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I remember being impressed with how Sambo outwitted the tiger and yes, he was from India. I Never read Mary Poppins. I think I will have to find a copy from the earlier time if I really want to read it.
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