Notes from a literary party

I talked with a woman whom I had not seen for years about the profile business. She told me about interviewing a hero of mine (and hers, perhaps even yours, oh cultured readers), who told her that his deepest romantic relationship had started when he fell in love with a ten year old boy; and who then went on to denounce the stupidity of Western laws on the age of consent. None of this made it into the published piece.

Upstairs, two women were talking about a celebrity guest, an athlete. "She’s so nice!" said one. "Yes. Just as well," said the other. "I’ve just learned that I’m going to have to write her book."

On the train home, I started to read a discarded Evening Standard and found a brief item about a press officer I know who has been "charged with eight counts of making and eight counts of possessing indecent pictures of children." This man is married. The sex or even the age of the children in the pictures was unclear. But he’s also a priest, so life will not be easy for him. I rang him this morning to get his side of the story and I can’t say I find it entirely credible.

I am surprised and a little shocked to notice that I feel that a great artist really deserves an indulgence that should not be extended to press officers, or even priests. These are deep dark waters. I don’t have a very considered opinion but – since I don’t have to make a decision – I am aware of how I feel, and of the sympathy I felt when I was told the interview story. Would I have felt less understanding if my interlocutor had not been astronishingly pretty, or if she had work a dress either more demure or even more flamboyant?

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18 Responses to Notes from a literary party

  1. Rupert says:

    But creative people always get more licence, from the poets who thumbed their noses at Viking earls to (as Louise reminds me) Eric Gill, who carved the stations of the cross at Westminster Cathedral in between fucking his daughters and the daughters of others.

    Goes the other way, too. Really creative people who are models of probity and good order – Charles Ives and his insurance business – seem slightly askew. Perhaps that’s because to be properly subversive, you’ve got to live a life beyond reproach.

  2. Louise says:

    It’s also funny what we do when we go into ‘professional mode’. I remembered Eric Gill because once in my previous existence as a manuscript expert, I had to listen to a nasty old brute of a certain Catholic religious order go on to my face about how Gill’s daughters really enjoyed it and had a happier family life than children today. As the junior manuscript curator in a departmental outing being given privileged access to some of their rare manuscripts, I felt I had to grin and bear it where I’d have normally told anyone who justified child abuse to feck off and die. Sometimes we don’t feel powerful enough to rock the boat and challenge someone, or there are powerful professional disincentives to speaking up.

  3. David Weman says:

    I feel no understanding.

  4. acb says:

    Of me, or of Louise’s story? I find her easier to understand than my reaction. It is part of the essential treachery of journalism that we listen to people saying things which are morally outrageous, and urge them, sympathetically, to say more.

    But here, an old man talking about the wickednesses of his youth? Two instincts struggle. I do feel that a great or even very good artist is worth more, deserves more, than the fleeting spasm of self-satisfaction which seems to be what readers get when we give them bad news. At the same time, I am more and more certain that I would have printed what he said. He said it, with the tape recorder on, in a formal interview, and it would have been surrounded by lots of other, possibly balancing stuff.

  5. qB says:

    I don’t understand how the physical appearance and/or dress of your interlocutor made you more understanding of the matter. If she, rather than the Evening Standard, had told you about the press officer would your understanding of that matter be altered too?

    You don’t make it clear whether the great and indulged person actually fucked the object of his affection. There’s the good old thought/action dichotomy if not.

  6. h. E. Baber says:

    Alas, it’s not what people who are creative or astonishingly pretty can get away with…it’s what those of us who are dull or plain can’t get away with. I’m for lower moral standards for everyone.

  7. Barrie says:

    Does a child victim feel better if the person abusing him or her is an artist rather than a priest, press officer or is just plain dull?

  8. David Weman says:

    Is the “hero” deceased?

  9. J K says:

    It should be remembered that behind every “more licenced” adult, is a helpless victim, a child.
    Is it politically correct now to state how many children sociery is willing to sacrifice, to get its creative people happy?

  10. acb says:

    Barrie — if you’re asking in general, I should imagine the answer is “probably not”. But there are degrees of wrongness in these things. A lot has to do with the age and physical maturity of the child concerned. It seems to me self-evident that what’s done to a ten-year-old is morally and qualitatively different that something done with a normal fifteen year old: it’s wronger. Since I don’t know how old the boy in this story was when a physical relationship started (assuming that it did) I’m just suspending judgement.

    In this particular instance, there is a lot of evidence that the boy in question — now married and with children of his own — did not mind or got something valuable of the relationship himself. His parents certainly knew.

    As I say, I don’t know enough about the facts to come to a properly informed judgement. I was interested in my own instinctive reaction that the public has no right to be morally outraged about an artist. When I put it that baldly, I’m sure that it is wrong. But it seemed to me worth noting that I felt it. Perhaps it was an expression of the feeling that journalism is worthless compared to art, and that the thrills of newspaper readers should never take precedence over the work of an artist. I don’t know. I am thinking out loud here.

  11. acb says:

    Is the “hero” deceased? Not so far as I know.

  12. Paddy says:

    Ya wuss!
    Dig a little deep enough and even long dead heroes can surprise you.
    Get used to praising the good you see, but don’t make it unconditional.
    No one is perfect. Question and denounce the wrong you see in your heroes or you’ll end up as sheep.

    – Pad.

  13. David Weman says:

    Is the “hero” deceased? Not so far as I know.

    In that case I don’t see how you can say that “I don’t have to make a decision”. What are the odds that a person that said what he said has a computer full of children getting raped and abused? It’s not certain, but they’re pretty good, I’d say. And maybe it’s worse than that.

  14. acb says:

    David, I would say they were immensely low. For one thing, he is very very old now. I do think your point is a serious one which would apply to most cases, and I hadn’t thought of it before, but simply because the whole tone and tenor of the life is one that is anti-porn, if that makes sense.

    I don’t know if I have made clear enough the way in which I heard the story, which was that
    (a) known, he met this boy when he was ten and
    (b) assumed, they had or he wanted a sexual relationship below the age of consent (then eighteen)
    © assumed, that there was a considerable gap between (a) and (b)

    For a comparable, heterosexual example, one might consider Alan Clark and his wife Jane, whom he married when she was (I think) sixteen after a courtship which must have started when se was younger. Though he was a shit and an enthusiastic admirer of Hitler, I don’t think he was a child molester and I don’t think he had a collection of kiddy porn.

    The evidence for © may sound weak to you. I can only say that this is how the story was told.

  15. Chris Bidmead says:

    “charged with eight counts of making and eight counts of possessing indecent pictures of children.”

    Assuming these were on a computer, what we are talking about is an arrangement of bits to form a picture that may or may not (chain of evidence, and so forth) be witness to what ordinarily we would understand as “a crime”. Yet here the crime itself is possessing a particular arrangement of computer bits. It is a crime (not merely evidence of a crime) to have particular patterns of bits on a hard drive in your possession.

    This strikes me (and I evoke the “just thinking aloud get-out clause here) to be just about as sinister as anything George Orwell dreamed up.


    Chris

  16. Sharon says:

    She told me about interviewing a hero of mine (and hers, perhaps even yours, oh cultured readers), who told her that his deepest romantic relationship had started when he fell in love with a ten year old boy; and who then went on to denounce the stupidity of Western laws on the age of consent. None of this made it into the published piece.

    What interests me is why she would be discussing this point at a party and disclosing the identity of the person to you (presumably, since you said this person is a hero of yours)? Why did the information never make it to the published piece? Was it off the record? If it was off the record what is she doing repeating the gossip at a party?

  17. acb says:

    Chris: I think that the argument that it is “just an arrangement of bits” is disingenuous. It has meaning, it is meant to have meaningl It is embedded in a social network. Someone made it for a reason. Someone sent it for a reason. If I go out to a party and later that night ring home and leave a message on the asnwering machine saying “I want a divorce”, that’s not just an arrangement of bits.

    Sharon: what can I say? Journalists gossip. Trading off the record information is what lubricates outr trade. We were at a party thrown by our mutual agent, something that makes anyone feel nervous if they are not at that moment best-selling, prize-winning, etc. Since we both write profiles for the same people, we were talking about the particular difficulties of that slot. As to why she didn’t put it in the piece, well, she didn’t want to cause a scandal.

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