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Host
there's a play that came to Broadway in March called Giant, about Roald Dahl and its complicated legacy. Roald Dahl, of course, is the author of beloved children's classics Matilda James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's a writer of skill, merit, but he's also a serious anti Semite. He told a reporter in 1983, quote, there's always a reason why anti anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. Just before he died in 1990, he told another reporter explicitly he was anti Semitic. The play about Roald Dahl, the Michael Jackson biopic that came out last week, Kanye West's redemption arc, all of these have resurfaced the great debate about whether art can be separated from the artist. In my view, the answer to this question is yes. Today I want to learn more about some of history's most notable literary and artistic geniuses who were bigoted or downright terrible and horrible people by contemporary standards. With us for this conversation is Eli Lake, host of Breaking History, an avid reader and the perfect guide for our inquiry. This is Old School. Eli Lake, welcome to Old School.
- [01:48]
Eli Lake
Thanks so much. I love the show. Thanks for having me.
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Host
The subject of our conversation today is one of perennial interest. It's whether we can still learn from and appreciate art that is made by bad people, odious people, distasteful people. Can we separate good art from undesirable? Bad, terrible, horrible, in some cases, artists?
- [02:12]
Eli Lake
I believe we have to. There's just been too many great artists over the centuries that have had in some ways odious views. Now, sometimes it's because, you know, you could argue that a figure like Voltaire, who we'll talk about, you know, was a product of his time, even though he was an important kind of figure in moving the west towards the Enlightenment. And at the same time, you know, he inherited many of the prejudices, particularly the anti Semitic prejudices of his era. And if you were to survey lots of people, what sounds shocking to us today and what Voltaire would write about Jews in his encyclopedia, it was fairly consensus opinion. In the same way that you Know, psychologists from a hundred years ago would often misdiagnose women with hysteria or it was there were kind of elite consensus position opinions that we today find outmoded, ignorant, offensive, et cetera. What do you think, though? I mean, can you. I mean, can you really separate the art from the artist? Because in some ways you could argue that whatever pathologies or ignorance or prejudice of the art, that's gonna be reflected in the art, but sometimes it can still be great and worth looking at, even if we say that it's come from somebody whose mind is addled on a certain particular issue.
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Host
Yeah, I mean, my own view is not dissimilar from yours on this score. A person who's ugly on the inside can create a beautiful thing on the outside. And oftentimes maybe we'll get into this that ugliness is responsible for the beauty in some cases that they can create, which is a complex thing. And so it's just not obvious to me. You know, I always tell my students, if you seek to learn from a pure person, you will learn very little. We're all fallible. And so, you know, this comes up. I teach political theory. This comes up in certain courses about, well, whether or not we can appreciate the Constitution and the Declaration, given the fact that the founders were slaveholders. You know, this is a question I have to take on all the time. And so I don't see why a true thought can't be held by or had by a person who has other fallible aspects of their life.
- [04:31]
Eli Lake
I would go back to the father of free inquiry, Socrates. He was a man of his time in ancient Athens who was opposed to democracy. I think you could argue that Socrates reasons were probably pretty good on what the Greek version of democracy was. He believed, or at least he tolerated slavery. So, you know what? Are we not supposed to read Plato's accounts of the Socratic dialogues? That would be horrible. Right. We would be inflicting an unnecessary kind of wound on our collective understanding of the world if we somehow wrote him out of the canon because of that. I mean, and also, I think the older you go, the harder it is to find that kind of purity.
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Host
But let me ask you to put the other side of the argument before us. In other words, there are people who do think that if a person is a bigot, if a person was a misogynist, if a person was an abuser, that the art that they create is simply beyond the pale. And I don't think that's an unserious view. And I want to be clear about that. So can you help me just put ourselves in the mindset of somebody, the emotional mindset, who does make that argument with which you and I happen to disagree, but nonetheless, which has some credit to it?
- [05:51]
Eli Lake
Well, if we were to steel man it, we would say something like this, that there are artists who've been part of the canon that did terrible things. And in some cases, like let's, let's take a. Let's take a pretty egregious example. Paul Gauguin, an extremely important late 19th century French painter. He went to Tahiti and adolescent girls were posing for his portraits and then he would later rape them because they obviously were too young to give consent. So should Gauguin be removed from museums? And the argument would be that it was that he's an important artist, but he's not the most important artist. We could get enough from other artists who didn't do that kind of thing, and we would be, you know, setting an important kind of marker that, you know, obviously we think that statutory rape is a horrible thing in our society. And add to that, you know, there's an element of kind of colonialism to the way that he did this, because at the time, Tahiti was, I think, a colony of France. So, you know, so there's an argument that in the here and now, you are making an important moral statement. My view is that it kind of breaks down. I mean, the way that I get around it when I think about it is that we should not valorize the great writers and artists of the past. And what I mean by that is we should point out when they've made great and enduring works. But we can also say that these are the works of human beings. In some ways, that's very empowering. Right? We all have flaws, and we are saying that this is a person who was flawed, who made something great. And that's the way to do it is just to simply tell the story, tell the history of these artists and tell the truth about them and don't try to cover it up.
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Host
So last weekend, this new biopic about Michael Jackson opened and it earned more money than any other biopic or musical biopic at any rate, ever produced. Now, of course, some of that money is foreign money in the box office tally, but there was a lot of chatter in the media about, you know, here we go again, right? Michael Jackson coming back where, you know, they're rehabilitating his legacy. They're glossing over all of the problematic accusations against him with respect to child molestation, you know, Michael Jackson, somebody who, when you listen to Thriller, you listen to Bad. You listen to Beat it, you're like, man, this person. And you look at those stadiums that he was filling. I mean, you think this person is, you know, rightfully called the King, the King of Pop. And yet these accusations haunt him. And people are coming out against his estate and saying they're trying to, you know, whitewash this and gloss it over and the whole thing, you know, that's not. He's a figure who died in 2009. This is not. This is not Voltaire. This is something where I think people are tempted to want to listen to his music because it jams, right? I'm not even kidding. Michael Jackson's really good. So how do you make sense of that and the public's response? I mean, their feet and their tickets, you know, they bought the tickets, their feet went into those theaters, and yet this kind of shadow hangs over that man.
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Eli Lake
Well, let me give a flippant answer first, because I thought a lot about this question about Michael Jackson. So if you really want to avoid the part of his career where we have a lot of. We have a preponderance of evidence that he was engaged in pederasty, then you're good up to bad, because the evidence starts coming in that it's on the Bad tour that you. You really see Michael Jackson kind of engaging in this predatory behavior of statutory rape of. Of young boys, which is terrible. But that gets you, musically speaking, off the wall. Thriller and Bad, those are the three best solo albums are him. All of his work with the Jackson 5, all of his work with the Jacksons under the Philly International. I would argue that it gets you like 80% of his and the best 80% of his canon. That's the flip answer. Obviously, it's a really hard thing. I think the problem, and I haven't seen the movie yet, the problem with that movie is that it just doesn't. It ignores this side of his, this flaw. So my rule is don't cancel great artists. We punish ourselves when we do that. But don't lie about them. That's my criticism of the filmmaker, which is like, if you're going to do it, you've got to account for this. You have to. You can't, you know, you can't just pretend it didn't happen, because it did.
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Host
And it's also important to. I think to say to learn something from someone who is bad is not to endorse their badness. It's to be a truth seeker.
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Eli Lake
Right.
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Host
It's the fact that you're seeking the truth and they may have said a true thing. And if they said a true thing or they created a beautiful thing that you can appreciate, that doesn't mean by necessity that you endorse the badness of their character or something like that. You're a truth seeker. And so I think it's important to occupy that disposition. I wonder if you think that these things are made easier with figures who go further back in history. You mentioned Socrates. What always comes to mind is Aristotle's argument for the naturalness of slavery in his politics. Of course, this is 2,500 years ago. Is it easier to excuse someone like that versus say someone in 2026 who's done a thing and made a beautiful thing? Does history, in other words, sand off the edges and do we have a kind of double standard there where. Well, we'll excuse the ancient Greeks. After all, they were slaying people and cutting throats on the battlefield in warfare which we would never engage in. But boy, their poetry's beautiful versus today, you know, we don't seem to give more contemporary figures the same leeway.
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Eli Lake
Well, I mean, we have to remember that when Aristotle wrote what he wrote, slavery was the dominant kind of political system. It was understood that if you, if you lost a war, you would either be slain or you would be, you would be brought into chattel slavery. That was just how it was in part. You could argue because of other things that Aristotle made us aware of about the nature of human beings and what the noble characteristics of one's character might be. You could argue that there are elements of Aristotle that helped lay the predicate for down the road the powerful arguments against slavery.
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Host
I spoke on this show to an ESPN journalist named Wright Thompson about the greatest athletes. One of the things he pointed out to me is in people like Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Tiger woods or Ted Williams, there's often something in there that's a little bit askew. And that askew thing often inspires the will. I mean, in addition to the ability and talent, there's some other mental hang up or something in there that is a kind of cause for catapult for their greatness. And I wonder with respect to the art that we love or the philosophy that we are compelled by, if it's not precisely that skewing of perspective, the kind of bizarre nature of some of these people that's both responsible for their odious character. You mentioned the man who was molesting young girls, which is an Awful thing. But that also somehow is bound up in the way that they produce beautiful works or at least partially responsible for that.
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Eli Lake
We got to be careful on this one, because to bring it to a contemporary example, right. Does the bipolar disorder that clearly Kanye west has, is that responsible for his recent dabblings in anti Semitism? And is that also the fact that he has this bipolar personality where he can have moments where his mind is working a gazillion miles an hour and then moments of great depression, which he has talked about recently? Does that somehow mean that his mental illness is the reason or the key to understanding his genius? I'm not entirely sure, because I think that when he's been on medication, he's also capable of producing really brilliant hip hop. I mean, hip hop's not for everyone. It may not be for you, but I love it. And I think that Kanye is, you know, like the Miles Davis of the genre. But on the other hand, there is something to that, especially when you move it from athlete. I mean, like, you're absolutely right about athletes. There's a certain kind of. Their minds are wired differently. Like, you know, there's the famous story of Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever, where he would be in practices before the season began, at times playing so hard in a game that didn't count that he would punch his teammate. I mean, Steve Kerr talks about this in the great documentary the Last Dance. And somebody who is willing to allow his emotions to become so high because he punched his own teammate in a practice, not even a game that matters, is not like the rest of us. Most of us would, you know, we would play hard in the practice. We would try to get better. But Michael Jordan was always at that kind of 100%. There are stories about Michael Jordan where after he retires, people pay money to play him one on one. And he would not let this person win. He wouldn't let up on them. He had to win. Everything he did. That's kind of almost a mania, right? But you could definitely say that that quality led him to be the greatest. When you're talking about somebody, when you're talking about great writers that have an ability to explain the world in a way that we haven't seen before, or a great artist who can show us a still life in the way we haven't seen a still life like that before. And that kind of creativity. I'm not sure that some of the negative qualities. Could Van Gogh have painted the way he painted had he not been, you know, so crazy as to cut his ear off and send it to an unrequited love, love of interest of his. I mean, that's an impossible kind of question to know. But on the other hand, it's true that, you know, we're. The reason that we read the great writers and the great philosophers and thinkers is because they, they have seen the world different than the rest of us. There's one question is how do we treat great artists and great writers in the. That are our contemporaries today when they do terrible things? And how do we continue to separate the art from the artist? And I think that that's a simple thing, which is to say, even if you're an artist, you still. There's no one is above the law in a free society. So if you're R. Kelly, a lot of people would say R. Kelly was a great artist. I mean, he's certainly a great hit maker. You could say he still should go to jail for what he did, even though the truth, it took a long time for it to come out simultaneously. I think we also understand that in our world. There's a famous line from Donald Trump from his the Access Hollywood tape that came out in the 2016 election where he's talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. And what is he saying? He says, well, when you're a star, they let you do it. That's true. I'm saying he said that thing and that is actually true. Usually the stars, our most talented people, get away with things that normal people can't. That's just how life is, sadly. But at the same time, we can hold that view. We can understand. Well, that's kind of how it is. And yet when people violate the law, they should face justice, whether you're O.J. simpson. And then maybe we could start with one of our writers, which is Norman Mailer, who stabbed his wife in 1961, Adele Morales. And she went to the hospital. He nearly killed her. And by the way, the story kind of shows that how like Norman Mailer was this really toxic, almost narcissistic personality. Why did he stab his wife? He stabbed his wife because she sort of said, you're not as talented as Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is. By the way, it's anyone who's read Dostoevsky, right? You know, maybe the greatest, maybe the greatest novelist ever. Right. And yet, you know, he ended up getting a suspended sentence and only charged with like, third degree assault. And it did not in any way impede his rising literary fame at the time.
- [18:39]
Host
Mailer stabbed his wife twice, which is shocking to me, first of all. But, you know, give us some account or some sense of what his great works are and why, despite the fact that he stabbed his wife twice, There are certain pieces of Mehler's corpus that you think are enduring and worth reading.
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Eli Lake
The one that everybody talks about is his kind of account and his novel after he serves in World War II, which is the Naked and the Dead, that is definitely worth reading. It's one of the kind of most rawest sort of literary depictions of war. For me, I like it's much later in his career, he does a book called Harlot's Ghost. And Harlot's Ghost is a novelization of the history of the CIA. And a few years back, for my original podcast, which turned into Breaking History, called Reeducation, I did a really deep dive into the moment more than 50 years ago now, when there was accountability for the American national security or deep state. And so I was very interested in the histories of the CIA. And what I found was, because it is by its nature, the CIA is a secret organization in some ways, you needed novels. So that's, for me, like I found Harlot's Ghost to be. Again, I know that it's a work of fiction, but if you read the histories and you kind of can, it brings it to life in a way. And he's such a. He's very skilled that way. Although he's got his peccadilloes as a writer as well as, you know, if you've read an e mailer, he's kind of obsessed with homosexual sex, and that's okay, you know, but for me, that's kind of interesting. And I've always liked him as a personality, and I kind of like how he does. So those are the ones other people would probably add. There are probably other novels by him, but I don't want to get a butt ahead of my skis. Those are the ones that I really like by Mailer.
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Host
Just knowing this fact about him that he stabbed his wife. And I've been given to understand, you know, he's something of a misogynist in some ways. Does this. Does. Does this color the way you read those books? I mean, are you, or do you think about that when you read these books? Does it somehow cheapen your appreciation of him, or does it enhance your appreciation of him?
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Eli Lake
Well, the thing about Harlot's Ghost in particular is there's some pretty graphic scenes where he's talking about gay sex, which didn't seem like it was necessary. For the plot, his misogyny that I knew about in terms of his personal biography. And then you read something like that. And then in later interviews, when he was asked. There's a famous interview where he was asked about this in not just Harlot's Ghost, but some of his other works. And he became. He was like, I'm from Brooklyn. Those are fighting words. What are you saying? I'm gay? Or something like that? Which is another kind of weird thing with him. You have to wonder, why does he go there? You know what I mean? Mailer in the 60s and 70s is a real public intellectual. So this is the moment when you sort of see the beginning and then the flourishing of second wave feminism. And he becomes a kind of friendly critic from the left, if you could call it that, of the feminists. There's a famous summit in New York where he addresses Germaine Greer and some of the other feminists of the era with a really inappropriate kind of speech. I don't know if he's drunk, but it's like, clearly, you know, he was rambling. But it's funny because, you know, he can get away with it. Cause he's Norman Mailer, I guess.
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Host
Let's turn back the clock a little bit. I do want to get to some writers who are a bit more recent, but I think we could go all the way back to Voltaire. And you mentioned Voltaire at the beginning. And so I wanted you to tell people who Voltaire was. What do you think, you know, makes him a genius? And then let's talk about some of the. The views that he held, that even despite those, you know, we still think we can learn from Voltaire. So who was he?
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Eli Lake
Well, I mean, Voltaire is, you know, probably the big French Enlightenment figure, along with Diderot, Rousseau and a few others that, you know, are responsible for the kind of ideas that inform the French Revolution. And of course, he's also written the enduring novel Candide, which I think endures, I mean, to this day. It's really a kind of, you know, the main character is Panglos, and it's somebody who always sees the best possible interpretation of the world. And it's funny in that respect. It's like of people who always are looking at the bright side. And he, you know, we should get to his anti Semitism. But, you know, he had very terrible things that he would say, he said about Jews. I did a little research beforehand, so I pulled up a couple of these. But like, one of his quotes from his philosophical dictionary is, they are all of them born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blonde hair. So what he's saying is that all of the Jews are fanatics, which is insane. Insane. But on the other hand, I'm not trying to excuse that. What I'm saying is that he's writing that in 1764, this is still in a period when just anti monarchy democracy is still kind of a pretty radical idea. It's before the American Revolution. And it's also reflecting, I think, with Voltaire, his broader kind of anti religion view. And so, you know, there are some people who have been Voltaire scholars, and I'm not a Voltaire scholar who would say he attacked Judaism, and particularly Biblical Judaism because it was a way for him to safely make his point about Christianity, which was much dicier for him in the mid 18th century. I don't buy that. I think he did hate the Jews. But that, you know, that's my view anyway.
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Host
There's also, you know, some pretty serious, by our standards, race prejudice in his work. I've got a quote here I want to read from his essay on the manners and spirit of Nations. He says this quote, if their understanding, and this is in this is with respect to the African race, if their understanding is not of a different species from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. They are not capable of any great application or association of ideas and seem formed to occupy a middle station between man and the brutes. Now, this quote struck me as absurd. I was just teaching last night a big group on Frederick Douglass, the greatest, arguably African American civil rights leader, intellect and order in American history. So this quote really did in fact strike me as just bizarre and backward. And so I'm curious, you know, how we should think about Voltaire in light of the anti Semitism that you mentioned. Now, this seems to be a kind of just overt statement of race prejudice. Why is he somebody whose Candide we should still read? What are the merits?
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Eli Lake
Well, you read Candide because it's a kind of a brilliant satirical novel about people who are foolish optimists. And foolish optimism is going to be a condition of some humans for eternity, probably. And its ultimate lesson, which is that you should cultivate your own garden, is enduring advice, which is that if you want to be happy, you should not think that you're going to be the next Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. You should make sure that your own house, your own family, your own garden is properly cultivated. And that is the key and has been Endorsed that is ancient wisdom, you know what I'm saying? And Candide is in some ways the book that basically kind of makes that point. It's one of the great examples of trying to kind of learn that lesson. So it's worth it for that. And I think you can sort of separate these ideas he has. The one thing I would say is that just to sort of give a contemporary, to use a contemporary of Voltaire, Adam Smith, who I think, you know, really is one of the heroes of intellectual history. I'm sure you would agree with. Many people believe that he's the father of capitalism as we understand it, but he saw it as a moral philosophy. If you read Adam Smith sharing his thoughts on China and the Chinese economy, he doesn't know much because this is a time when there really isn't much of a relationship between Europe and China. But he knows enough from talking to travelers. I mean, he sounds pretty racist when he is discussing the average China Chinese person who he's never really met. But of course we should still read it because, you know, he, you could argue he didn't really, how could he have known better, you know, and you know, we can't impose our own morality in, you know, the 21st century on what he was writing in the 18th century. That's not to give Voltaire a pass because there were other French Enlightenment figures who did not have this kind of hostility to Jews. It's just to simply point out that it was far more widespread. Voltaire is like a kind of a dangerous rebel figure in the end of the Bourbon dynasty because what is he? He's basically one of those people who's arguing against the power of the Church and the power of the king. So, you know, I don't know, we needed brave genius thinkers at the time to help us get to, you know, the next phase and to have the Enlightenment. So, you know, again, it doesn't, again, it doesn't excuse it. I just think you just have to tell the truth about these people.
- [28:30]
Host
Take me Forward now to T.S. eliot, one of the great 20th century poets who I think, you know, is frequently read in high schools and whose poetry the Wasteland and these sorts of things are classics. What do you think makes Eliot a genius?
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Eli Lake
First of all, I mean, nobody wrote like him. If you read Grantium or the Wasteland, they're just, it's the, the beauty and the power of the language. You know, I, I, I mean, I'm still in awe of him. I mean, I, I, I, I can relate much more to Tillius Elliot than I can to many other poets. I mean, I just, I mean, it kind of speaks for itself. Again, I'm not a literary scholar, but that's my, that's my view, is that you just have to understand him as one of the greats.
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Host
Well, you're moved by him and you're moved by his words and the way he puts together language. Tell me a little bit about what you find problematic about T.S. eliot, but nonetheless, you still attest to the power of his poetry.
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Eli Lake
Well, let me read you a section of his poem Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a cigar and this. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll see the anti Semitism pretty clearly. I'm just going to read a part of it. Declines on the Riado wants. The rats are underneath the piles. The Jew is underneath the lot. Money infers the boatman smiles. Now that's pretty bad, right? I mean, that's. The Jew is underneath the rats, you know, as. He's so. And he was also very close collaborators with another poet of, you know, of his contemporary, Ezra Pound, who's another one of the greats. The Canto is one of the great. I mean, his Canto, which is, you know, several parts of it, is very much worth reading. And he was also recognized in his time. And so, you know, this again was a kind of post. This was a, this was a pretty common view. It was a aristocratic British view of Jews. And again, it's not an excuse, but I think, you know, T.S. eliot was reflecting that.
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Host
I mean, you mentioned Ezra Pound. Like, this is a whole other kind of situation, right? Because doesn't he move to Italy and like, join or support the Axis powers?
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Eli Lake
You know, during the Vietnam War, which many Americans obviously opposed, Jane Fonda famously took a propaganda tour where she, she gave messages, I guess, that were broadcast to American prisoners of war who were, who were held captive, urging them to, you know, surrender to give up their information and things like that, which is pretty disgusting in my view. Jane Fonda, though still a talented actress. Well, Ezra Pound went one further. He literally moved to Fascist Italy in the run up to World War II. So this is when the United States was not officially enemies with Mussolini's Italy, but after the war, you know, kind of got. After the war is on, Ezra Pound stays there and becomes an important English language propagandist for the kind of official fascist radio and his. And he, he gives an absolutely blinkered view of the stakes and he has all these nice things to say about Hitler. And thinks that America had been taken over by Jewish bankers and really devotes himself in some ways to the cause of the Axis powers just through propaganda. But it was significant enough that he was arrested after the Allies finally caught up to him when they march and march through Italy. And he was tried in absentia in Washington for treason. As an American citizen. He got out of. He was not executed for treason, but he was sent to an insane asylum in Washington, D.C. where he stayed for like 13 years, basically kind of getting out of it by pleading insanity. He wasn't insane. He was just on the wrong side of history. And that in some ways it was. You know, it's a very interesting question because a number of American literary giants like Ernest Hemingway lobbied for him to eventually be released because it was unfair to him to, to be like, locked up in this mental asylum. Does this mean that. That Ezra Pound's Canto should not be read? No, of course, he was a great poet. He, he, he has, he, like Elliot, was really a genius with language and came up with phrases that we hadn't seen before. Although his style is a little bit different in that he loved his sort of, kind of almost cut and paste or, you know, from other works that he was constantly absorbing, which I always sort of see him as a kind of literary collagist in that respect. But, you know, at the same time, he also did write kind of unreadable pseudo economic tracks on like, the dangers of Jewish banking and so forth. There's no reason why anybody should read that. That stuff was nuts, you know, so. Yeah, but to me, it was kind of an interesting question, which is that a lot of the sort of, the view was that we are depriving ourselves of future works from this great artist if we sort of keep him in this insane asylum. Eventually Ezra Pound is released and he spends his rest of his life in Italy, which he sort of adopted as his home. But you could tell it really took a lot out of him. And I don't think he produced as much after that.
- [34:26]
Host
So what do you think about the children's author Roald Dahl? There's a play about him that's come out that has caused some controversy. I mean, just so people know, I mean, Roald Dahl is an author that we to this day, unapologetically put in front of children. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda. Many of these stories are classic, they've been made into film. And yet I understand that Roald Dahl had some complicated views. In my own view, that doesn't mean that I don't want to sit down with my child and read aloud James and the Giant Peach, Matilda or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Those are stories of extraordinary delight. They bring joy, mystery, humor. And so I'm curious to get your view of Roald Dahl, given the kind of more recent controversy surrounding him.
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Eli Lake
I mean, I'm generally just against canceling great artists. His main kind of problems were that he had this sadly, a very kind of a view of Israel that is now very much in style, at least, and especially among the intellectual elites in the west, which is that he really did see Israel, you know, as a, as a kind of almost demonic state. And that's really kind of how he expresses anti Semitism. And I would not be surprised if we will be, you know, in 50 years, some of the really impressive artists today, because it is almost impossible in the academy today to be accepted unless you sort of nod along with what I see as an extreme anti Zionist opinion that is anti Semitic. And my hope is that view, which is, I think, obviously very much in error. We'll look at some point, look at that, and say, oh my God, this was monstrous, that we made excuses for various terrorists who were trying to destroy the Jewish state.
- [36:39]
Host
So the word of the day is Canto. Now, we've talked about cantos before on old School, when we talked about Dante's Divine Comedy, which is made up of cantos today, it came up in the context of our discussion about Ezra Pound, who was a poet who wrote Cantos. Canto comes from the Latin word cantus, which means song. It's a division of a poem. And you'll find these kind of short sections, the way chapter sections exist in a novel. These canto sections exist in long poems. Canto.
- [37:17]
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- [37:48]
Host
Are there other notable examples that come to your mind here in music or in books?
- [37:55]
Eli Lake
We talked about Gauguin, I mean, Shakespeare and the Merchant of Venice. We have the phrase Shylock, you know, was depicting a Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh. That's pretty anti Semitic stereotype, I'm sure you would agree. Should we not read the Merchant of Venice? Should it not be performed? I Don't believe that. And, you know, Shakespeare, again, we, to this day, people know what a shylock. Shylockism is a. Is a money lender who charges, you know, exorbitant interest. And that was the name of a Jewish character. So that was. That's. That's. That's one. And, you know, without Shakespeare, you know, the English language is impoverished. So what do you do with that?
- [38:35]
Host
We want the people whose art we love, whose books we love, whose music we listen to in our hearts. We want them to be extraordinary people. We create a vision of them. And that vision doesn't always correspond to reality, such that when we do find out that they're merely human or in some cases, that they're bad people in whatever way.
- [38:59]
Eli Lake
Deeply flawed.
- [39:00]
Host
Yeah. The disappointment is catastrophic in a way. So I'm just curious to get you to reflect on what in human beings wants the creator of the thing that we love to almost be godlike. I mean, you know, we make them into these mega stars, for example, or we have these visions of what they must be like at dinner and how they. And the profundity. But the fact of the matter is they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. And sometimes when they're putting their pants on, they trip and fall on their face too. So they're not that. What in us longs for them to be, you know, these unrealistic things.
- [39:39]
Eli Lake
Well, great artists produce works that connect with us. There are books that feel like they're not people, but they feel like we have an intimacy with them. Same for songs or great movies or great, you know, works of pictorial art, you know, or great sculpt. I mean, there's certain things that they connect with us and it creates a connection because of the power of the art itself. And so in that respect, I think we want to believe the best in them and we want to celebrate them. And we want, you know. And that's very human. And I mean, I don't know the answer to this question, but it's worth thinking about, which is that in our society, you know, if you compare this to, say, how feudal societies are like, you know, you know, were organized, the people who were kind of great actors or great playwrights, even in Shakespeare's era, did not have the same status as the nobles. It's. It's a modern thing in our. In our system where you've written great plays, you've written great music, you've written great books, and you profit from it and you are celebrated and you are in A world you're part of. A world that most of us do not have access to. You know, sort of behind the velvet rope and so forth, to me that's fine. I mean, they've earned it. But on the other hand, when you are in that world and you are a really powerful artist and you can do, you know, and you just write hits or you write great books or everything like that, it can create a kind of world where you don't pay consequences for your very bad behavior. But you see a lot of great artists who have pretty destructive drug habits. And it's hard to have an intervention with somebody like that. Whereas if you're just a regular man or woman working at a job and you fall into a drug habit, an intervention with people in your community can be very powerful. It's very hard for somebody if you're like a Michael Jackson, you know what I'm saying? I always try to think about Michael Jackson in this regard, which is that Michael Jackson, when he starts this horrible practice of inviting nine year olds to sleepovers at Never Never Land or whatever he's doing, was there somebody in his immediate community, somebody on his staff, somebody who was an assistant, somebody who was his collaborator, Quincy Jones, whoever, who could say, Michael, this is really not okay. It's not normal behavior. You can't do that. It's hard once you kind of hit that superstardom level, to have that. If you choose not to have that in your world, you sort of lose the ability to have that kind of very important feedback from just people that are kind of on your equal footing. When you are a celebrity and you are kind of artistic genius, giant kind of figure.
- [42:48]
Host
But from the point of view of the fan, what seems to be going on there is that there's a moral simplification. But by that I mean you look at this person who has made this thing you love and you want them to be good because you want in a way the world to be in harmony. The great thing is created by a great person. It's a good person who makes a good thing. There's a kind of consistency there. What you then are unwilling to do if you make that demand on the art that you consume, that the good art must emanate from a good person, is to see what I think is the more valuable pedagogical lesson, which is that good things can come from bad people and therefore there is complexity and nuance to the moral world in which we live.
- [43:34]
Eli Lake
You've accurately described the mentality of a fan who would like to believe the best out of the artist that they love. Absolutely, that's true. But we live in a free society with a free press. And since the sort of era of celebrity began, there has also been an industry of what might be called muckrakers who find the dirt on Hollywood celebrities and then produce them in sort of, you know, scandal sheets. And there's always, if you're an ambitious journalist, you can't ask for a better story than, you know, a star who is crestfallen, a star who has a deep flaw that you have exposed. There's nothing that the media loves more than to knock down somebody who's reached Sisyphus for the Sun. It's like, that's. That's what we do. Sadly, now, you shouldn't be doing that out of malice, I don't think. I don't think you should ever make it up. And you should try to always write as a journalist with humanity and empathy. But that's the other side of it as well. So that's. I just put that out there.
- [44:47]
Host
Let me invite you to push our thesis to its very limit as we conclude. So, as I understand it, our thesis has been that beautiful things, profound things, true things, stand on their own two feet, separate from the flaws, to put it lightly in some of these cases that characterize the maker. And I think we agree about that, that education requires that kind of intellectual maturity. Is there any line that you think is simply not crossable? In other words, if someone is such and such a person or has done such and such a thing, Even our thesis that the beauty of the art or the profundity of the philosophy is its own statement no longer holds.
- [45:34]
Eli Lake
No, I don't think so. I mean, a Mailer stabbing his wife is pretty bad, right? Michael Jackson pretty bad. And I wouldn't argue for banning Michael Jackson music from the radio or streaming services. And I wouldn't argue that we should pulp Norman Mailer's book or not teach him in American literature classes. But on the other hand, my corollary to that rule is don't lie about the flawed genius. Tell the truth about them and their flaws and understand that that's part of it as well, and really grapple with the question as to whether or not this flaw in the artist, whether it's bigotry, whether it's something that they did, whether it's kind of misogyny that we see with Mailer or something like that, and how it affects their art. But grapple with it, but also. And then a corollary to my Corollary might be, don't let that be the only defining thing about the artist. So we wouldn't necessarily call Thomas Jefferson an artist. He's a Renaissance fan, for sure. But should we not read notes on Virginia and the Declaration, Declaration of Independence, because he was a slave owner and he had an affair with Sally Hemings, which is something that really. It's hard. You can't really excuse it. I don't think you could even excuse it at the time. I think it would have been a scam, that the Sally Hemings thing was a scandal or would have been a scandal. The answer is, yeah, you should know about Sally Hemings. You should know about the fact that he owns slaves. You should know that. You should know all these things about Thomas Jefferson. And you should also understand that he articulated for the Continental Congress one of the kind of our nation's charter and one of the greatest and, you know, most beautiful expressions in the first, you know, in the preamble to the Declaration of, you know, man's relationship to government and our natural freedom.
- [47:31]
Host
Part of the educational process, as you say, consists in reading the work. So look at the work, read the Declaration, you know, study notes on the state of Virginia. But at the same time, consider the kind of man Thomas Jefferson was to have been able to write that, or the kind of man Norman Mailer was, or the kind of man Roald Dahl was to have been able to write that. And that is its own additional lesson in the complexities of the world on top of the artwork itself, from which you're also learning.
- [47:54]
Eli Lake
I think that's beautiful and all. Yeah. And I would add one more. Also look in Jefferson's letters and try to pull out where he himself understood these self doubts and understood the. He also wrote about the problems of slavery personally. So there's an interesting element there where it's like Jefferson himself understood his own hypocrisy. Does that make him better? Does it make him worse? But that's why, you know, it's worth studying, and that's why he's still. We should still talk about him, you know, nearly 300 years later.
- [48:28]
Host
Eli Lake, thank you for coming on old school and shedding light on this inquiry.
- [48:32]
Eli Lake
Thank you.
- [48:34]
UnitedHealth Group Announcer
Now, finding a doctor is a little less challenging. UnitedHealth Group is investing in tools that make it easier for patients to navigate health care and pay less. These transparency tools help patients find providers. And this is the big compare costs up front. The big picture, more transparent pricing benefits everyone. These tools from UnitedHealth Group can help patients save hundreds of dollars annually. Learn more@unitedhealthgroup.com commitment.