Showing posts with label Dan Mallory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Mallory. Show all posts

Friday, April 5, 2019

Separating the Art from the Artist

Regarding AJ Finn (Dan Mallory) and his blatant lies, how important is an author’s personal ethics in your regard for his or her work? Knowing about Mallory’s public lies, would you still read his book?

by Paul D. Marks

Well, the point in this particular instance is moot since I read the book well before the controversy broke. So I can’t say 100% for sure if I would have read it had I known about all of Mallory’s shenanigans. I might still have wanted to read it, though maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to pay for it. Maybe get it from the library or some other source.

Mallory/AJ Finn’s book The Woman in the Window was a huge best seller and is being made into a movie. For those unfamiliar with Dan Mallory’s/Finn’s transgressions here’s just a sampling: He claimed his mother and brother had died, mom of cancer, brother of suicide. Both are alive and well. He claimed he had cancer and surgery for a brain tumor. Apparently he even sent e-mails under his brother’s name with updates on his condition. He claimed to be British and went around speaking in a British accent, using British phrases, like going to the loo. And there’s more.

That said, lots of artists (fine artists, painters, wall painters, wallpaper hangers, musicians, writers, actors, etc.) are schmucks of one kind or another. Wagner was a major anti-Semite, Hitler liked him and his music was played in concentration camps. Picasso is said to have been one nasty s.o.b. Celine was an anti-Semite. And many celebs today are not nice or even decent people, some of which I can attest to personally. I don’t listen to Wagner, unless I’m watching Apocalypse Now, but not because of his views. His music just isn’t my cup of tea, and I do like some classical music and especially baroque. But I still look at Picasso paintings. I still read Celine. – Check out this piece at the New York Times, “He’s a Creep, but Wow, What an Artist!”: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/artists-assault-fans.html

Generally speaking, I’d say you have to separate the art from the artist, which is easier in some cases than in others. I suppose someone could do something so egregious that I wouldn’t listen to their music, read their books, go to their movies, etc. And I’m not saying there isn’t a little twinge sometimes when I see/hear/read these people and their work. But I think there’s way too much nitpicking people apart these days.

I wouldn’t want someone to not read my books because they don’t like the fact that I like the Beatles as much as I do and that’s about how silly it’s getting. We’ve all said and done things we shouldn’t have, things we regret, but that’s not the whole of our beings. And certainly not our writings, our art.

On a similar note, people are defriending others simply because they disagree with them. Around Christmas time I usually put up a satirical video by the Dropkick Murphys. I think it’s funny. I guess some people don’t because a Facebook friend defriended me for putting up that video. (Judge for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-sdR6Yzk ) She was offended by it. She raked me over the coals, both in the comments section and in private e-mails. She was also angry about another video that another friend posted in the comments. I didn’t even post that one and she tore into me for it. I apologized for offending her three times, but I wouldn’t remove the video that I’d put up. I did a piece about this for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which you can find here: https://somethingisgoingtohappen.net/2018/08/01/flame-wars-more-by-paul-d-marks/

None of us – none (not even Mother Teresa, I’m sure) – could stand up to the scrutiny of every minute of our lives. We all have things in our pasts, things that may even have seemed innocent at the time, but in retrospect maybe aren’t. An off-color joke, an unwanted advance, an angry outburst like Liam Neeson admitted to recently (https://www.nme.com/news/film/liam-neeson-removed-from-queens-university-belfast-prospectus-after-controversial-race-comments-2468159 ). Will you avoid his movies, past, present and future, forever? Is he persona non grata now?


I’m not excusing anything anyone’s done, I’m just saying we’ve all done things we regret, but that they aren’t the totality of our being.

I see things that annoy me or bother me or piss me off one way or another all the time, on Facebook, in the media, in real life. About people whose works I like. And mostly I just let it go, as I hope people will let go my transgressions because we are all only human.

Semi-Spoiler Alert re: The Woman in the Window:

And now to bring it full circle, back to Mallory and The Woman in the Window (also the name of a terrific film noir from 1944, which Mallory took his title from, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea, and directed by Fritz Lang – check it out). I liked the book okay, but thought the ending was a bit of a letdown.


What about you? How do you react to artists who are less than stellar in their private lives?

~.~.~
And now for the usual BSP:

The Anthonys. Well, from the BSP Department and since Anthony voting is still in progress, I hope you'll consider voting for Broken Windows in the Best Paperback Original Department.



The third story in my Ghosts of Bunker Hill series, Fade Out on Bunker Hill, appears in the March/April 2019 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. If you like the movie Sunset Boulevard, I think you'll enjoy this story. In bookstores and on newstands now:



Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com