Authors are People, and People are Complicated

Last week, I had the chance to meet Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket aka author of the wildly successful Series of Unfortunate Events books when he spoke at a conference I attended. I was really looking forward to listening to him and moved when he spoke, which is a complicated feeling for me, because not long ago he did something despicable.

Handler is a big, grouchy, gruff man whose wit is sharp and words are sharper.  He tells great stories, uses words as the powerful tools they are, and gathers the audience collectively under his power as he spins a tale. He had a lot of great things to say about libraries, books, and the way adults recommend books to kids. Handler weaves such a compelling tale of why, in his books, often there are no happy endings and things don't make sense.  When he spoke about his childhood love of libraries,

their continual presence in his life, I actually teared up. His honesty was refreshing and his observations keen. He was a joy to listen to. 

And I felt very conflicted about that. In fact, initially, I had been reticent about going to hear him at all. 

About a year ago, Handler was one of the hosts of the National Book Awards (Of which I am, admittedly, a fan). The prize for young adult literature went to Jacqueline Woodson and her novel Brown Girl Dreaming. This book is a work of art.  It is beautiful, fun, sharp. It is a book in verse while still seeming to fall from the tongue like the moments of everyday life.  Woodson wrote of her young life, growing up as a black girl in a world of complicated dynamics and paradigms.  She is a master of words, and in her book she talks about a young love of hers blossoming, that of writing. 

The book won the National Book Award and was a Newberry Honor. It was received the Sibert Honor, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the NAACP Image Award.  Woodson was later named the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate. 

At the ceremony, Handler made a racist joke.

It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a slip of the tongue.  It was the end of a Handler-esque series of sentences with a pause for effect. It was planned out. It was a racist joke. At the award ceremony where Woodson was being honored. Woodson's work was in the limelight. Her story of words and beauty and struggle and creativity was the spotlight. 

And this ignoramus made a racist joke.  To try to cover it, he clumsily followed up with a comment sweeping Cornel West, Toni Morrison and Barack Obama into the mess.

Handler spent months apologizing. 

But how does one apologize for having a heart that tries to amuse with a racist joke? And how does one listen to such a person with respect and admiration?

What about his books? Does the fact that the author is a horrible person lesson the value of his literature? 

Welcome to the slippery slope!

And welcome to the tricky, treachery of the uneven moral ground. 


I can't watch Woody Allen movies, as I am so repulsed by him, yet Roman Polanski's The Pianist is a masterpiece. Both men have been accused of and been proven to have committed disgusting sexual crimes. Yet, somehow, a line is drawn.

We hear all the time about the wicked life of Lord Byron and the terrible parenting of Hemingway. 

Bill Cosby's Little Bill books are well written, engaging, visually appealing, and presenting diverse characters.  But they are written by Bill Cosby, who has now been accused of rape by over 50
women. Yet the books have literary merit. But the rape allegations. 

That feeling? That is the tenuous position we take on shaky moral ground. 

What about Stephen Ambrose, whose works as a writer and an academic form an impressive body of work? Yet with the power of the internet, those works were investigated and Ambrose's sterling reputation tarnished by allegations of plagiarism. 

Lance Armstrong's memoir: nonfiction or fiction?

The instances go on because, at the core is the fact that authors are people, and people are complicated. 

So there I sat, in a duality of both loathing Handler's comments and being moved to tears by other comments of his.  

And there I still sit.  Some people have asked that all of the Cosby books be removed from libraries.  Those books will be read by children!

For me, the question is less about who gets to decide and whether the life of the author weighs into whether the book has literary merit.  

As unclean as it makes me feel, I think the answer is no. There are children reading the Little Bill books, seeing characters who look like them (in a publishing world of precious little diversity), represent their lives and their values. Bill Cosby's horrific actions are separate from that. 

And for that reason--the separateness of the author's personal life and the value of the work--I listened to Daniel Handler.  I appreciated what he had to say and enjoyed his storytelling skills. And I did all of this while firmly believing that what he said about Woodson was horrific. 

Yes, it is moral shaky ground, and one day I may revise my assessment. But for today, his inexcusable actions diminish Daniel Handler, the man, not his body of work.