Keep art free and we keep ourselves free.
A book called My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent focuses on long-term incestuous abuse by a father on a daughter and on others. That it’s written by a man has led to attacks on its validity. “In no way reflects how an abused woman feels,” and so on. Do they speak for all incest and abuse survivors?
I have not yet read this book but intend to, as it covers topics and themes at least two of my own novels being advanced address. I’d expect a similar snarling response to my work, should it ever see publication.
His observations are valid, though. He never claimed to be an abused woman. His depictions are based on observation and induction. This is valid in fiction. Can these shrieking naysayers not grasp how to read fiction?
In point of fact, those who say his characters don’t depict what it’s really like for abused women or incest targets speak subjectively. They project their own prejudices. They can testify to their own experiences only. Extending an individual’s experience to others is specious. It seems persuasive until examined. Hurt comes in many forms on a wide spectrum of reactions.
Facile dismissal is no dismissal at all. Further, perhaps the male writer of the book was a target of incest and long-term sexual abuse. The decriers wouldn’t know. It’s not uncommon for a writer to mask personal details by changing the sex, setting, or situation of the protagonist in a work of fiction. This lets the writer to say what cannot be stated outright, at least not at that time, for any number of personal reasons that remain unknown to readers.
Confession and fiction balance precariously. On one side, Mary Sue lurks. On the other side, whining and self-indulgent spew. These scales are calibrated to the closest degree of detail. Placing a heavy thumb on one side tilts things only in favor of the critic, who is honing a socio-political axe.
Then there are vicious critics who accuse Tallent of being a latent, would-be, or perhaps practicing predator. They call his book a pedophile’s fantasy, masturbatory and crass, vile and lacking in literary merit. This reaches past lit-crit into dark innuendo and character assassination. It is extremism in the service of what is now called Cancel Culture. Such people use hatchet jobs to chip away at any representation of socio-political theses they don’t like. They seek to sink careers by turning readers not only against the work but against the writer as a person. This is genuine evil.
These days such smear campaigns swarm any work of art that represents any but the artist’s superficial race, culture, and milieu as perceived by the howling mob of post-literate shit-throwers. Cultural appropriation, colonialism, and other artistic crimes are cited with increasingly-imprecise definitions. These terms are used now solely to besmirch this or that work or artist, with no regard to the validity of the charge.
Can Robert Palmer validly sing a Calypso song? He was “white”, sure, but also British and also, by birth, Bahamian. The howlers scream that it’s colonialism, not love of indigenous music. They make no distinction between theft and interpretation. They say he should only have sung music from his own precise, contained background.
That’s what they claim of all art now. No artist can explore influences or express interpretations of other cultural heritage. Picasso cannot use Neanderthal art to create Cubism. Gaugin cannot be influenced by Tahiti. They must sing, paint, or write only what they know directly via their experience. Observation and thought don’t count.
This ignores the fact that Sam Clemens had never been a slave, yet created Jim in Huck Finn as the most human, mature, and compassionate adult in the novel because he understood Jim’s desperation to escape to a place where his skin color did not curtail his humanity.
This practice of stamping out any but approved topics or handlings rooted in direct experience ignores the fact that Stephen Crane, who produced The Red Badge of Courage, universally renowned as a premiere novel about the Civil War and war generally, never saw combat and never witnessed a battle. Leo Tolstoy wrote the sweeping War and Peace yet was a nobleman who hadn’t experienced all the levels of society he so vividly, accurately portrayed.
Observation, memory, and humanity are what produce good fiction, not necessarily experience. Sometimes experience is a hindrance. Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a kaleidoscopic science fiction fantasy of dark crazy impressionism. He focused on a man blasted loose in time, who never knew from when his next experience or observation might come. Past, present, and future collide with inner and outer worlds to horrific effect. He depicts a mind shattered by war’s horrors, vividly, brilliantly avoiding even the attempt to write a coherent, straightforward account along the lines of All’s Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque.
Suffice it to say that fiction stems from the imagination. Yes, it’s usually better if rooted in at least some muddy, bloody reality, but it needn’t be. A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay is a brilliant fantasy that seems to be hip-deep not in reality but in myth and Protean creativity.
My examples are from my experience and observation, books I’ve read and studied. My opinions accrued from a lifetime of being serious about storytelling and writing, literary and otherwise. Decrying works of fiction as invalid simply because they step on toes or impinge on territories others claim as theirs alone is bigotry, not literary criticism.
We see the insistence of limiting creativity to the creator’s life experience as anti-intellectualism, at root. It denies observation, exploration, and education. It denies influence, fantasia, and inspiration. It seeks, as did Nazi and Soviet regimes, a strictly conformist set of iron-clad rules to control human expression.
It’s as ugly and stupid as those who called Rock & Roll “jungle bunny” music and railed about “jungle rhythms” that would “drive teenagers wild”. Fear of dark skin and sex, in other words, drove their bigotry. Same Puritan idiocy infecting us from the 1600s until now. Same “protect the children” stalking horse used by the Nazis and so many other despots. Emotive words used to short-circuit thought, to stampede masses into atrocities.
Same is happening now. School boards ban and even call for the burning of books. They want lists of those who read certain disapproved books. They use the term Cultural Relativism to condemn inclusive rather than exclusive teaching. They seek to impose propaganda in place of fact and edit history to reflect insupportable beliefs.
Round ‘em up and shoot ‘em all is the rallying cry of extremists determined to destroy democratic and humanist ideals. Art of all kinds is the flashpoint, being easiest to attack and most difficult to explain. It’s a wedge issue, always, with an aim at eroding rights and imposing authoritarianism.
Fact is, there are literally no restrictions on art. Oh, sure, some art will be destroyed and will get you lynched by an intolerant, ignorant mob. That, however, is not an arbiter of the art’s validity.
Keep art free and we keep ourselves free.
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