American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller

We started the year dipping into a delightful surprise – American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller.  Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old.

Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that the upheavals of the 1960s resulted in a seismic change in what America meant and, consequently, what it meant to be an American.  One would think that this is an invitation for Miller – a professor at Bennington College in Vermont and the author of Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects – to take potshots at the Great American Century.  However, such is not the case at all, as Miller rightly sees the downside of our social “progress.”  More often than not, it would seem to Miller that the America of the 1920s, 30s and 40s was a funnier, and perhaps, better place than the country we know today.  (A sentiment with which we here at the Jade Sphinx are in full agreement.)

The book has entries on a wide array of laugh-getters, including falling safes and anvils, pratfalls, milquetoasts, flappers, hash, hobos, outhouses, rolling pins, castor oil, dishwashing husbands, nosey neighbors and noise – and that is just scratching the surface.  Miller also talks about many of the formerly great venues for this humor, including full-page comic strips, radio comedy, silent movies, and of course, joke books. 

Coming in at 544 pages, one would think that American Cornball more than overstays its welcome; however, one wishes the book was longer and some of the entries more detailed.

Miller’s particular genius is not just in enumerating instances of a comedic trope, but wondering why they were (or are) funny in the first place.  Miller has keen insight into the human condition, and finds many of his observations in the arena of the ridiculous.  Though not a philosopher like G. K. Chesterton (quoted, incidentally, in this volume), Miller’s worldview is that of an expansive humanist with a predisposition to the comic rather than the tragic. 

The encyclopedia format keeps the observations loose and light, and this also proves to be one of the few flaws in the book: when Miller really has something to say (which is often), he is hamstrung by his format.  One hopes that he will follow-up American Cornball with a collection of essays of greater depth and fewer topics, as there is much more for him to say.

But what he does say here is terrific and to be savored.  I read through the volume with a goofy smile plastered on my face – and how could anyone resist a book that cites the Three Stooges, W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers a source material?

Here is an example of Miller at his best, rifting on the subject of pain:  There is, as far as I know, not one scene in all of Henry James where a character of either sex sits on a thumbtack.  I haven’t read everything by Henry James, but I’ve read enough to know what the rest must be like, and nowhere do I see a thumbtack penetrating an unsuspecting buttock.  Stubbed toes are also few and far between, if they occur at all.  And unlike all those hapless dads on America’s Funniest Home Videos, the males in James’s arcadia never get it in the balls.

Good stuff, that, but better still, here he is midway on his discussion of morons:  In our culture, “That’s not funny” really means “It’s wrong to laugh at that,” which is why we sometimes say it even while laughing.  “That’s not funny” is only secondarily a report on the speaker’s true reactions, though it can be an effort to train those reactions.  If you strongly disapprove of something and therefore insist it isn’t funny, that isn’t quite as dishonest as insisting that O.J. Simpson was never a great running back because you hate the psychopathic asshole he later became.  No, it’s more like refusing to find an actress beautiful because you hate her personality.  Given the determination, you really can suppress your sense of humor, like your sense of beauty.  But if you say, “There’s nothing funny about mental retardation, and for the life of me I’ve never understood why anything thinks there is,” you must be either a hypocrite or a saint.  Either way, you’ve clearly forgotten the jokes of your childhood…..

Then there is this, on farting:  Before it became permissible to discuss farts openly, our forebears relied on all kinds of substitutes— from ducks to tubas, from foghorns to balloons. It may be that the fully lifelike simulation of farts became possible only with later improvements in sheet rubber, but in the pre-whoopee epoch it wasn’t necessary or even desirable for a noisemaker to sound exactly like the real thing; it just had to sound like something sometimes used to symbolize the real thing. Novelty makers are always boasting about how “realistic” their products are, but in this case, realism wasn’t wanted.  Instead, aspiring practical jokers were offered a range of metonymies and metaphors.  Even in our unembarrassed age, the whoopee cushion itself still claims to imitate a “Bronx cheer” or raspberry—not a fart but the imitation of one made by buzzing the lips in what linguists call a bilabial trill. (The reason that sound is called a “raspberry” is that it is or was cockney rhyming slang for “fart,” via “raspberry tart.”) The sound is the best simulation of a fart we can produce with our normal speech apparatus.  In the early 1930s, when whoopee cushions took the world by storm, raspberries too were in fashion, at least on the funny pages—both Dagwood and Popeye had recourse to them now and then.  A little later, Al Capp gave us Joe Btfsplk, the world’s biggest jinx, easily recognized by the small black cloud—a personal fart cloud? —hanging over him at all times. When asked how to pronounce Joe’s surname, Capp would respond with a raspberry, adding, “How else would you pronounce it?”

I loved American Cornball, and spent much of the past few weeks reading it aloud to all and sundry.  This is a treasure for anyone interested in humor – and a perfect gift for those without a sense of one.  Highly recommended – and Mr. Miller, more, please.

Master Humphrey’s Clock, by Charles Dickens

Even the greatest authors are sometimes taken by surprise at their own work.  Case in point is Master Humphrey’s Clock, by Charles Dickens (1812-1870).  I had been dipping into it the week prior to Halloween, and a tasty treat it is.

But it is not, however, anything like Dickens intended it to be.

Master Humphrey’s Clock tells of a lonely, elderly cripple (Master Humphrey), who lives in a spacious home complete with ornate longcase (grandfather) clock.  The clock case holds a wealth of papers – stories told by members of a private club, called Master Humphrey’s Clock.

Members of the club include Jack Redburn, a gentleman of a free-and-easy sort; an older, unnamed deaf gentleman; retired merchant Owen Miles; and Mr. Pickwick, so well remembered from the book The Pickwick Papers.  Downstairs, the servants have a mirror society, Mr. Weller’s Watch, run by Mr. Weller (Pickwick’s servant), the barber and Mr. Humphrey’s maid.

The book, then, is a frame story about Humphrey and his friends and servants, and the stories they tell.  Serendipitously for the time of year, English story-tellers when confronted with glowing hearths and bottles of port usually tell stories with a grim or macabre flavor.  Master Humphrey’s Clock contains one rather somber, medieval revenge tale, as well as a splendid “ghost story,” complete with a gibbet, masked aristocrats, midnight runs and mysterious witches.  It is almost impossible to put down.

This being Dickens, his natural inclination towards comedy cannot be suppressed, and Mr. Weller’s tale is one rich with low comedy and dialect shtick.  If your taste runs towards that sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

Dickens’ greatest critic – author G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) – thought Master Humphrey’s Clock to be mid-level Dickens at best.  But, Chesterton also argued that it was incredibly emblematic of the way the great man’s mind worked – the central ideas of home and warm hearth, the delight in story-telling, the larger-than-life characters who seem like old friends upon meeting them.  Also in evidence are Dickens' untrammeled flights of fancy, his pawkish humor, and his taste for the outlandish.  And GKC may be right … many writers with a particularly distinctive voice sometimes sound like imitations of themselves, and Master Humphrey is the greatest imitation of Dickens mimicked by the great man himself.

If this sounds as if I were not recommending Master Humphrey – do not be deceived.  It is a wonderful romp that can be enjoyed without hesitation.  Indeed, as autumn progresses and winter approaches, there are few better places to be than beside the hearth and longcase clock of Master Humphrey.

All of which would be a surprise, to some extent, to the author himself.  Master Humphrey’s Clock started not as a collection of short stories, but as a magazine written entirely by Dickens.  The premise of the publication was Humphrey and his friends gathering weekly to read stories stored in the clock.

Initially, the magazine was a success, but sales soon slumped.  Dickens then started telling the story that would become The Old Curiosity Shop, the serialization of which took over the entire magazine.  Sales soared to 100,000 weekly; he then started Barnaby Rudge in the same magazine, which also met with marked success.

Though not a great book in itself, Master Humphrey’s Clock made The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge possible; to this reader’s view, that makes it a very important book, indeed.  It is available for free download at the indispensable Manybooks.net, and comes highly recommended.

Alarms and Discursions, by G. K. Chesterton (1910)

Over the past many months we have been reading quite a bit of that brilliant author, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (1874 – 1936), creator of the delightful Father Brown detective stories.  Though little-remembered today, Chesterton was one of the outstanding critics and thinkers of his age.  There are many reasons to admire GKC, but perhaps the most sensible is that he had never lost his childlike sense of wonder.  It was his innocence and clarity, mixed with a prodigious erudition, that resulted in his gargantuan influence as a writer and thinker.  He is simply the finest critic of Dickens and Stevenson I have ever read, and his take on Shakespeare is enthralling.  To read Chesterton is to see these writers anew, as if some profound truth were staring us in the face and it took a little boy to point it out.

The Falstaffian figure of GKC was familiar to all literate people in the US and UK for decades.  Tall and fat, he wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat and cape, and often carried a sword cane.  Of such figures legends are made, and Chesterton, the man himself, influenced writers who converted the easily recognizable figure into a string of fictional characters.  (His influence on detective fiction is vast – and the man himself served as the model for the fictional Dr. Gideon Fell, who appeared in mysteries by John Dickson Carr.)  The most contemporary figure similar to GKC would be Orson Welles; but though brilliant, Welles did not have his deep and profound depth of learning, his purity of soul, nor his sense of fun.  Welles was old before his time; GKC was forever young.

Chesterton earned his bread and cheese as a journalist, writing for the London Daily News.  His 1910 book Alarms and Discursions features dozens of columns on a variety of different subjects.  Paging through this book, the reader would learn his thoughts on everything from democracy, to cheese to the failure of the English upper classes.   Anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating man should look at his newspaper columns while also reading his many novels and books of sustained criticism.

Here are some quotes:  When a man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid, there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. The most obvious is to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact tip of the nose. But if you have scruples (moral or physical) about this course, you may proceed to employ Reason, which in this case has all the savage solidity of a blow with the fist. It is stupid to say that "most people" are stupid. It is like saying "most people are tall," when it is obvious that "tall" can only mean taller than most people. It is absurd to denounce the majority of mankind as below the average of mankind.

Isn’t that grand?  And here is GKC writing in 1910 something that is even more pertinent to 2014:  In a popular magazine there is one of the usual articles about criminology; about whether wicked men could be made good if their heads were taken to pieces. As by far the wickedest men I know of are much too rich and powerful ever to submit to the process, the speculation leaves me cold. I always notice with pain, however, a curious absence of the portraits of living millionaires from such galleries of awful examples; most of the portraits in which we are called upon to remark the line of the nose or the curve of the forehead appear to be the portraits of ordinary sad men, who stole because they were hungry or killed because they were in a rage. The physical peculiarity seems to vary infinitely; sometimes it is the remarkable square head, sometimes it is the unmistakable round head; sometimes the learned draw attention to the abnormal development, sometimes to the striking deficiency of the back of the head. I have tried to discover what is the invariable factor, the one permanent mark of the scientific criminal type; after exhaustive classification I have to come to the conclusion that it consists in being poor.

GKC had a remarkably Christian point of view – and by that, I don’t necessarily mean he wore his Catholicism on his sleeve.  He was a Christian humanist – someone who, seemingly against all odds, genuinely loved people.  This is a rare quality among those who live in the mind, but GKC was a rare man. 

The charm of a book like Alarms and Discursions is that it can be read through in one sitting, or can be dipped into almost indiscriminately.  There is not a page without gold of some kind, and, in addition, even his most interesting observations are presented with a puckish insouciance.  Read this, and savor, especially, the last line:  Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world. The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. The second class may be called for convenience the Poets; they are often a nuisance to their families, but, generally speaking, a blessing to mankind. The third class is that of the Professors or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful people; and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and also to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps, like all classification. Some good people are almost poets and some bad poets are almost professors. But the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest reflection and research.

Alarms and Discursions is available at Project Gutenberg, and the invaluable www.manybooks.net.  It makes for wonderful reading.

Magic, A Fantastic Comedy, by G.K. Chesterton

This … philosophical comedy comes to us from 1913, and is an example of Chesterton at his mystical, questioning best.  The setting and set-up are simple: Patricia Carleon, daughter of a duke and a girl given to nature and fancies, meets a man who tells her that he is a fairy.  When it is revealed that he is really a conjurer there for a village entertainment, she is heartbroken.

However … is he really “just” a conjurer?  This becomes the subject of much debate between a clergyman, the Rev. Cyril Smith, the village doctor, Grimthorpe, and Patricia’s recently-arrived-from America brother, Morris.  The action takes place in the Duke’s drawing room, complete with French windows with a view out into the lawn and neighboring homes.

As practical, scientific Morris “exposes” the sham tricks of the conjurer, more and more inexplicable things occur which could only be the result of magic;  Morris has a fit and needs medical attention.  The following exchange occurs between Rev. Smith and Dr. Grimthorpe:

Doctor. I have got him into bed in the next room. His sister is looking after him.

Smith. His sister! Oh, then do you believe in fairies?

Doctor. Believe in fairies? What do you mean?

Smith. At least you put the person who does believe in them in charge of the person who doesn't.

Doctor. Well, I suppose I do.

Smith. You don't think she'll keep him awake all night with fairy tales?

Doctor. Certainly not.

Smith. You don't think she'll throw the medicine-bottle out of window and administer—er—a dewdrop, or anything of that sort? Or a four-leaved clover, say?

Doctor. No; of course not.

Smith. I only ask because you scientific men are a little hard on us clergymen. You don't believe in a priesthood; but you'll admit I'm more really a priest than this Conjurer is really a magician. You've been talking a lot about the Bible and the Higher Criticism. But even by the Higher Criticism the Bible is older than the language of the elves—which was, as far as I can make out, invented this afternoon. But Miss Carleon believed in the wizard. Miss Carleon believed in the language of the elves. And you put her in charge of an invalid without a flicker of doubt: because you trust women.

Doctor. [Very seriously.] Yes, I trust women.

Smith. You trust a woman with the practical issues of life and death, through sleepless hours when a shaking hand or an extra grain would kill.

Doctor. Yes.

Smith. But if the woman gets up to go to early service at my church, you call her weak-minded and say that nobody but women can believe in religion.

Doctor. I should never call this woman weak-minded—no, by God, not even if she went to church.

Smith. Yet there are many as strong-minded who believe passionately in going to church.

Doctor. Weren't there as many who believed passionately in Apollo?

Smith. And what harm came of believing in Apollo? And what a mass of harm may have come of not believing in Apollo? Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? Is there no such thing in the house at this moment?

Doctor. Then you think no one should question at all.

Smith. [With passion, pointing to the next room.] I think that is what comes of questioning! Why can't you leave the universe alone and let it mean what it likes? Why shouldn't the thunder be Jupiter? More men have made themselves silly by wondering what the devil it was if it wasn't Jupiter.

Doctor. [Looking at him.] Do you believe in your own religion?

Smith. [Returning the look equally steadily.] Suppose I don't: I should still be a fool to question it. The child who doubts about Santa Claus has insomnia. The child who believes has a good night's rest.

Doctor. You are a Pragmatist.

So, of course, we are now in familiar Chestertonian territory: the question of “reason” vs. “belief.”  Like Dickens before him (and GKC idolized Dickens), Chesterton saw magic in the everyday.  An almost pagan animism is rampant in the works of Dickens, and while Chesterton sees the mystery inherent in all the natural and man-made world around us, he, unlike Dickens, tends to put a more Christian spin on the great mystery.  However, Chesterton also believed that Christianity was merely one prism through which one could perceive the magic of the ordinary.

The era just before (and immediately after) the Great War was also the Golden Age of Fairies in England.  The little folk were seen everywhere, or perceived to be seen everywhere, and this is not surprising.  That period was perhaps the most dramatic break between the Old and New Worlds – more so than the Industrial Revolution.  Life had become increasingly more urban, methods of killing more efficient, and lore and legend that had survived for generations was becoming lost.  People felt ungrounded, as if the world that they had known for so long no longer existed, and was replaced with something foreign and profoundly unhealthy.  The cult of nature – and of natural gods, such as fairies, elves, Pan and assorted wee-folk – had its powerful last hurrah before being wiped away forever by progress.

Chesterton was, by nature and temperament, a man who would applaud the return of fairies into everyday life, and one who could resist what might be an eternal question: do things become real simply through the power of our believing in them?

All Things Considered, by G. K. Chesterton

Not many people today remember Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (1874 – 1936) outside of his delightful Father Brown detective stories.  This is a shame, because Chesterton was also one of the outstanding critics and thinkers of his age.  It has been argued that we are all born with a natural sense of wonder, but that by age 13 or so it is beaten, combed and prayed out of us.  Chesterton never lost that childlike innocence and clarity, and mixed that sensibility with a gargantuan intellect.  To read Chesterton on Dickens or Shakespeare, for example, is to see these writers anew, as if some profound truth were staring us in the face and it took a little boy to point it out.

Gargantuan was perhaps the perfect word for Chesterton in other respects.  He was simply enormous, both tall and hideously corpulent.  He wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat and cape, and often carried a sword cane.  Of such figures legends are made, and Chesterton, the man himself, influenced writers who converted the easily recognizable figure into a string of fictional characters.  (Most notably amateur detective Dr. Gideon Fell, created by author John Dickson Carr.)

Chesterton’s political thinking was fairly close to that of your correspondent, writing that the whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.  Hauntingly prescient to 2013 America.  I have been reading a great deal of Chesterton latterly and have found him a balm for a somewhat bruised soul. 

Chesterton was also a journalist, and writing for the London Daily News.  His 1915 book All Things Considered features more than 30 columns on a variety of different subjects.  Leaving few stones unturned, Chesterton writes about daily annoyances, on literature, on missing trains, on Modernism … Chesterton wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, and this is, understandably, the smallest sampling.  Anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating man should look at his newspaper columns while also reading his many novels and books of sustained criticism.

In the introduction, Chesterton writes This is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current subjects for it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as this, it may last twenty minutes longer than most of the philosophies that it attacks.  So, yes, many of the bugaboos and cultural concerns are outdated, but the refreshing take on reality and the authorial voice remain magnificent.

Here are some quotes:

But I never succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is rally the matter with modernism.  The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness.  It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.”  To flaunt the fact that we have had the last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris.  To introduce into philosophical discussion a sneer at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age.  It is caddish because it is irrelevant.  The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot stand to be one month behind fashion.

Here’s something quite terrific: They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books.

On reformers: It is a fact that optimists are more practical reformers than pessimists. Superficially, one would imagine that the railer would be a reformer; that the man who thought everything was wrong would be the man to put everything right. In historical practice the thing is quite the other way; curiously enough, it is the man who likes things as they are who really makes them better… It is because the optimist can look at wrong not only with indignation, but with startled indignation… The pessimist can be enraged at wrong, but only the optimist can be startled [enough to want to change it].

On Shakespeare: Nobody could say that a statue of Shakespeare, even fifty feet high, on top of St. Paul’s Cathedral, could define Shakespeare’s position. It only defines our position towards Shakespeare. It is he who is fixed. It is we who are unstable.

Like much of Chesterton’s criticism, this book is available for free on www.manybooks.net.  It is an invaluable site for bibliophiles.

What Do Artists Owe Us As Human Beings?

Michelangelo was a truly wretched person.  Smelly (literally), paranoid, argumentative, rude and money-mad, he was not the man who would become your beloved uncle.  Other painters who were not the nicest of men include (and this is just the cream of a very long list) the murderer Caravaggio, the murderer Wainewright, the absent husband-father Gaugin, the deranged Van Gough.  (In fact, recent inquiries indicate that perhaps it was Gaugin that slashed away Van Gough’s ear…)  Picasso was a philanderer and possible collaborator, and not the most generous of men, and Fra' Filippo Lippi broke his priestly vows and fathered a son (the mother was his model for the Virgin).  And so it goes.

Before too many composers start snickering at their paint-stained colleagues, there is the monstrously bullying anti-Semite Wagner and moody and unpleasant Beethoven.  Conductor Herbert von Karajan and pianist Ellie Ney were card-carrying Nazis.

Writers do not fare much better.  Ernest Hemmingway was a bully, drunkard and a wretched husband and father.  (There was a collective sigh of relief from all who knew him once he committed suicide.)  Coleridge and De Quincey were drug addicts.  Poe was a drunkard and snob.  Bernard Shaw was an early supporter of Mussolini and Pound favored Hitler. 

And need I remind you that President Abraham Lincoln was shot by … an actor?

Pop culture fares no better.  Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise are crackers to different degrees.  O.J. Simpson murdered his wife.  (Sue me, big fellah.)  L. Ron Hubbard managed to con several generations out of millions of dollars (now billions) with an invented religion.  (A business model which still attracts your correspondent…)  Rock stars are notorious for drug use, and rapp singers are equally famous for the rap sheets detailing their crimes.  (Rapp ‘music’ is indeed a remarkable cultural commodity – it is the first time in history that music was created largely by criminals for criminals.)  Mark Wahlberg started out as a cheap hood responsible for one crime victim losing an eye.  (At least he only had to see half of Walhberg’s movies…)

And what about the families of artists…?  Are they under scrutiny, too?  Harry Connick Sr., father of Sinatra simulacrum Harry Connick Jr., spent more than a decade willfully trying to execute a man his office knew was innocent.  Does that mean we should dislike Harry Jr. and his music?

However, it is important to remember that without the above we would not have the Sistine Ceiling, the Ring Cycle, The Sun Also Rises, The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner, The Raven, and Pygmalion among other masterpieces.

So if the question is, what do artists owe us as human beings, then the short answer is – nothing.  No artist owes the human community more (or less) than is required of any other human being.  Of course, it’s always delightful when one’s artistic heroes turn out to be big-hearted and generous of nature.  It’s nice to know that G. K. Chesterton was a lovely man or that Charles Dickens was warm and good natured, for instance.   But neither man was a saint – they were human beings, flawed and all the more interesting for it.

However, the real question is not whether or not artists owe humanity more or less than anyone else, but rather should they be treated (or considered) any differently?  And here the answer is short and unambiguous – no.

Artists may be above convention, but certainly never above the law.  Nor does an artist automatically get a pass simply because he is dedicated to making art.  Hemmingway was a wretched father and husband who happened to write several interesting novels – I’m not sure that the children he crippled emotionally were particularly enamored of his prose.  And I doubt that John Thompson, the man almost murdered by Connick, Sr. and his office, is going to a Harry Connick, Jr. concert anytime soon.  As an artist Michelangelo could not be touched – as a human being, no one wanted to touch him.  And measured by any yardstick other than aesthetic achievement Wagner was a vile and abominable human being.

But once we know of the (sometimes horrific) failings of artists, what is the proper reaction of people who regularly engage with the arts?  That is perhaps the most interesting and most key question.  For example, I have always been able to enjoy Wagner’s music, but I was born decades after the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism of fin de siècle Germany is not particularly relevant to my life.  However – I understand and appreciate the Wagner ban in Israel.

Michelangelo’s shortcomings as a person were so personal – and are now so distant – so to mean nothing to me as I contemplate his unparalleled artistic achievement.  None of Caravaggio’s crimes are evident to me on the canvas and Fra Lippi’s indiscretions now strike me as more amusing than sinful.  However, the very things that made Hemmingway a loathsome human being are there on the pages of his work for all to see: the posturing, the bullying, the macho-minded idiocy.  And I certainly have a harder time taking Shaw seriously as an intellectual when I see that he was beglamoured by an unlettered thug like Mussolini.

So, the cut-off point for the aesthete and the bad-boy (or bad-girl) artist must be purely a personal one.  Do we forgive them for their lives?  I am not prepared to say that art (and artists) are too removed from morality for this to be a valid question – it’s perhaps a primary question.  For myself, I’d never pay money for any work that would in some way fill the pockets of Gibson, Cruise, Walhberg or Connick – you may feel differently.

I would be interested to learn from my readers where they stand on this question.  Does the art erase the bad behavior of an artist?  And if so, why?