Creative Work Versus Personal Life

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris

If filmakers, writers, musicians or visual artists are jerks can we still respect their work? It’s a question that has come up recently on Facebook about Woody Allen’s history of sexual abuse, but it could apply to anyone.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that tomorrow your favorite lesbian writer commits a cold-blooded murder. Or your favorite straight male playwright molests his seven year old daughter. Should these folks face the consequences of their actions and go to jail? Of course they should. Do these actions make all their creative work null and void as though it never existed? My answer happens to be a resounding no!

I don’t need to like and admire the way a person conducts his or her personal life to appreciate their work. I condemn child molestation. I abhor murder but I can still respect a  creative end product that transcends an individual's personal failures, even criminal ones. It doesn't mean that I am fine with anti-social behavior. If Adam Lanza, the Newtown Connecticut mass murderer had written a beautiful poem before shooting 20 schoolchildren, would it still be a thing of beauty afterwards?

I used to idolize Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris as the ideal couple of heterosexual writers. I loved Erdrich’s “Tracks” and “The Beet Queen.” I found myself particularly moved by Dorris’ book, “A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.” To me he did an amazing job of taking on the voice of a woman as well as incorporating the struggles of Native women into his narrative.

When Dorris was accused of molesting his three daughters (one adopted and two biological) I thought that was a horrific thing that crossed the line of acceptable behavior.

But I still will continue to admire his writing.

Guns & Mental Illness

Shooter Adam Lanza

Another mass school shooting by a deranged, well-heeled white adolescent, this time aimed at a younger group of students and everyone is up in arms, so to speak, at the gun laws which allow private citizens to purchase semi-automatic weapons like AK-47's without so much as a background check.

And they are right. The American gun addiction and romance with the second amendment is inexplicable and terrifying to a Jew like me who, as a youngster, never got near a forest let alone a hunting rifle. The other factor that has been ignored or underconsidered in these shootings is how alienation, bullying and mental illness sometimes unite to monstrous ends.

The mentally ill are and have been greatly neglected by our society. Releasing people to the streets on mind-numbing drugs that they have no motivation or desire to take is not an answer. Neither is warehousing drugged patients in understaffed facilities. We need to find other options because this problem is not going away anytime soon

When I worked on the reference desk at San Francisco Public Library, I saw and tried to help a lot of mentally ill people. Many were homeless or lived in SROs (single resident occupancy hotels, one step from the streets). Most of the problematic types admitted to being off their medication. Tourists from Europe would often comment on the pathetic state of affairs on the San Francisco streets. Can't anything more be done for them? was a question we librarians were repeatedly asked.

I don't have any pat answer. This is an issue that is finally beginning to shake our souls.But until we find a pill to correct the hormonal imbalance that produces schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders, we must find a more productive way to care for the most disturbed among us.