Opinion

Chapter and Worse

Brian White lives in south Indre with his wife, too many moles and not enough guitars

For me, understanding other people’s circumstances before judging them putting oneself in their shoes – is a lesson best taught by great fiction. When a novel drops us into the push-and-pull of another life, we ponder our own response. What would I have done? This can - and should – be unsettling. Among my long list of favourites, two “American Pastoral” and “The Human Stain” - are the work of Philip Roth. Despite admiring his awesome power on the page, I knew little about Mr Roth himself. However, a new biography of the author, who died in 2018, examines his shocking misogyny and ‘predatory’ behaviour. The man was a nightmare to live with. The revelations prompted one British tabloid (have a guess) to wonder if, in the age of the #MeToo movement, his work should be ‘cancelled’. I took this to mean some kind of posthumous blacklist an absurd suggestion, floated simply to provoke a response. Nonetheless it prompts the question: Should it matter when an artist is shown to be less attractive than the work they create? A couple of years ago I wittered on in these pages about Frank Sinatra, having read an enthralling profile by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. It wasn’t pretty. The singer’s entanglement with, let’s call them ‘family guys’, was far more extensive than I had imagined and his scarily vindictive nature was laid bare. True, he could be heroically generous, but not if you crossed him. Now, I’m not naïve enough to expect probity in the famous; talent and integrity are infrequent bedfellows, only one of them being required for lasting fame. However, the reality was in such violent conflict with the hip, ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ image that Mr Sinatra projected, it was some time before I could listen to him breezing through “April In Paris” again. A talented guy, no question, but still.... Maybe I’m being inconsistent. I’ve been devoted to music all my life, much of it created by as cheerful a bunch of degenerates as ever blinked. The most exhilarating concert performances I ever witnessed, especially back in the 70s were they pharmaceutically assisted? Like a small branch of Boots the chemist, probably. Did that bother me? Not a jot. Because unlike Mr Sinatra, what I knew of those bands led me to expect nothing else. Seeing Led Zeppelin at glorious full tilt in 1972 didn’t bring to my mind terms like ‘abstinence’ and ‘self-denial’. Even the rarefied realm of classical music has its share of lowlifes, although few surpassed Richard Wagner in the undesirable stakes - a Nazi before there were Nazis. How about the art world? Caravaggio was the most famous painter of his time, his skill in contrasting light and shade is still studied today. But the guy himself was a thug. Caravaggio was a violent drunk who viciously attacked numerous people and killed at least one in a fight. (His paintings do feature a disturbing number of beheadings – the clues were there, people). So, genius or sociopath? Philip Roth aside, the literary Hall of Fame is a cavalcade of weirdos: fascists, serial philanderers, blackmailers etc. I grant you, not many can match Mary Shelley, (whose ‘Frankenstein’ was less bizarre than her private life), or Norman Mailer, who rather scuppered his effort to become the mayor of New York City when he stabbed his wife at a fundraising dinner. But there are plenty more not far behind. We humans are contrary, shot through with high ideals and low skulduggery. Complex lives of impressive achievement will inevitably feature a level of contradiction and cannot be reduced to mere caricature: hero or villain? Tick one box only. Our opinion of an artist is often bruised when we look beneath the carefully contrived image but it’s normally their families who are the real collateral damage. Back in the 1940s, when Henry Fonda was an A-list Hollywood star - and hence rarely at home - his young daughter Jane watched him on TV playing the head of a loving household. “It must be wonderful to have a Daddy like that”, she told her mother. I recall a long-ago BBC documentary about Groucho Marx in which his son described the great comedian as a ‘cold fish’. In poignant contrast to the muchloved public persona, he portrayed his father as a detached and remote man who struggled to show emotion with his children. Reviewing the programme, TV critic Herbert Kretzmer eloquently assessed Groucho in a way equally applicable to so many. “A cold fish he may have been,” wrote Mr Kretzmer, adding, “but what ripples he made when he swam”.

I’m not naïve enough to expect probity in the famous; talent and integrity are infrequent bedfellows