NOTES ON A SCANDAL

Having just finished Peter Carey's excellent new novel Theft, I would appear to be in the ideal position to weigh in on the recent contretemps surrounding the alleged depictions of his ex-wife in the novel.  However, I do say "appear" because it seems that it's not necessary to have read the book to find the essential – if understandable – wrongheadedness in this assertion:

"I think it is a misuse of literature. I don't think literature at that level should be used to settle scores. And I don't want to be portrayed as the horrendous woman of literature."

This argument that there's any proper "use" of literature is stillborn, if you believe, as I do, that art has absolutely no "use" or duty or obligation or responsibility to anyone or anything except unto itself.  Which is – ironically (or not) – one of the central themes of Theft, in which a painter engages in all sorts of reprehensible behavior in the name of art.  (One also wonders if the aggrieved ex-Mrs. Carey would consider, say, more flattering literary immortalizations as somehow more appropriate to literature's "use.")  So at the most basic level, one has to object to this stance.

But there are further grounds for objection.  Malcolm Gladwell's essay on plagiarism is being widely linked to in the wake of the Kaayva Viswanathan scandal but it's actually quite instructive in this case.  At one point, Gladwell writes about a character in a play based – perhaps a bit too closely, according to its subject – on a real life figure.  The woman in question objected to actions the character performed, for fear that these actions would be associated with her.  Gladwell's point:

It is easy to understand how shocking it must have been for Lewis to sit in the audience and see her "character" admit to that indiscretion. But the truth is that Lavery has every right to create an affair for Agnetha, because Agnetha is not Dorothy Lewis.

And "The Plaintiff" of Carey's novel is not Alison Summers.  She is a character in a novel, and even if she is modeled directly on Carey's ex-wife, she is still a fictional character in a novel.  I realize in these post-Frey days that distinction can sometimes be hard to make but there it is.  Summers married a novelist.  Even if he cut and pasted her into his book, she would surely have known that was a possibility – it goes with the territory, artists are notorious parasites.  The very title - Theft - can make this no clearer.  Either way, whether we find it tasteful and pleasant or not, he had every right to do so, however upsetting Summers might find it.

None of this precludes sympathy for Summers' distress.  But still there's more.  By going public in this fashion, Summers has ensured that the character in the book will now be read in precisely the fashion she fears.  I'm not in the NY gossip loop, and the particulars of the Carey/Summers marriage were entirely unknown to me until the day after I read the book.  And it never remotely occurred to me that Carey was mining his personal experience in any way (beyond the extent that all writers draw on their experiences) – because frankly most readers just don't care about authors' private lives.  Journalists and gossip columnists do but most readers simply want to read a good book.

It's worth noting that the character of "The Plaintiff" is on the periphery of the periphery of the book, nowhere near its central action, referred to perhaps a half dozen times.  The references are deeply scathing but they are also easy to dismiss giving the defective character of the narrator - he holds nearly everyone in similar contempt.  In fact, I assumed - given Butcher's awful behavior - that his wife's leaving him was entirely warranted.  But now Summers has ensured that few are likely to be able to enjoy that interpretation of the work.

Finally, the notion put forth in the Independent piece that because the character shares some superficial simiarities to Carey, he must be Carey, is just, well, plain stupid.  There's no more polite way of saying it:

But there are inescapable similarities between the book and Carey's own life. Its central character, Butcher Bones, is an artist born the same year and in the same town outside Melbourne, Australia. Their careers have taken them to Sydney, Tokyo and New York, but perhaps more crucially both have recently emerged from bitter divorces.

This is simply jejune reasoning.  Literature is filled with examples of characters who bear more than a passing resemblance to their creators but they are not their creators.  That's the game, taking something known, crafting it, layering it, shading it, changing it.   In his essay, Gladwell also talks about the question of transformation, about taking something from its source and turning it into something more.  That's what creating a work of art is, and that's what Carey has done with Theft.

What do you think?  Your comments are welcome and encouraged.

Comments

[Bobby Farouk]

Sometimes the writer remembers to sand the serial numbers off the cars he steals. Sometimes not. But he is not dishonest. He doesn’t sit in your front room pretending to be a volunteer fund-raiser for the Heart Fund. When he visits he introduces himself as a car thief. He doesn’t conceal his intentions. He follows you into the kitchen and rifles the drawers for the car keys while you stand at the counter pouring grounds into the coffee-maker.

[John Shannon]

I would like to agree with you but, having hurt people myself in print and, on the other hand, having danced at the edge of poisoning the well of history by altering facts to protect others, I think the ultimate moral stance of a fiction writer has to be a bit more nuanced than a simple free-for-all of writerly irresponsibility. Just one example: it is very difficult to sit through a production of After the Fall, as I recently did, and not feel more than a bit of discomfort at the public laceration of someone who was so well known, so close to the author and so obviously stricken with borderline personality disorder. It's not black and white, discretion vs. truth; but it can be a damned tough question.

[Jody Tresidder]

I would also like to agree with you. I believe I was even taught to agree with you in Lit. Crit. Theory. But I cannot.

Sometimes, the journalists and gossip columnist circles (the circles that care about authors' private lives) punch successfully far above their weight. The untransformed "truth" can be truly vile for the victim.

Never personally suffered, I hasten to add. But I generally, squeamishly endorse John Shannon (above).

[Lynne W. Scanlon]

Where did I read that you should NEVER tell an interesting personal story to Norman Mailer because there was a good chance it would appear in one of his books?

Did the ex-Mr. Carey think the ex-Mrs. Carey would not flip through the pages of her ex-husband's book, looking for the good parts? Come on! Isn't skewering an ex part of the fun of divorce? Oh, sorry, author's license and all that. I forgot. I'm sure it never occurred to the author that his ex-wife would turn out to be "overly sensitive." It's just all a misunderstanding, I'm sure.

[Will Pritikin]

Recently I had a spar amongst friends about the Frey scandal. For some roguish reason I stuck up for the author as a kind of rebellious prankster, someone who did something cleverly and I thought, mildly, unethical. While my fellow conversationalists could admire his tenacity, in the end I had to submit that what had happened amounted to a kind of base dishonesty and fraud, not necessarily from a literary stance, but from the very wretched perspective of the consumer of novels.

We at least pretend as though we don’t tolerate plagiarism, fraud, or libel in our arts. We do promote allusion, association, improvement, derivative, satire, and other evolutions of nearly every thoughtful kind. Being culturally-minded and empathetic to the arts means we are squeamish to censure any evil-looking thing for fear of accidentally burning up the golden work that looked ugly in its youth. But even so there must be some balance. In an imaginary scenario that is not Carey’s, where certain libelous accusations become true, what should happen? And if the accuser is lying, for motives unknowable, what then? Great art exists for its own sake, and significantly so, well before it starts to tally-up other modes of being. How much biographical material must seem verisimilar, if any amount, before we legally classify a novel as non-fictitious and damaging? Le-art-pour-le-art is ultimately an ideal, a lovely ideal, and it is unfairly that we must force it to compete for preservation within the red-in-tooth-and-nail framework of our society.

I must read Carey’s new novel to make any kind of judgment here--but it nearly doesn’t matter. The Independent paints a scathing picture of Carey, while fighting valiantly to bend Ms. Summers into a merely defensive pose; whatever the truth behind the portraitures. Only time will tell which one withers and which remains true to the day it was painted.

[Steven Augustine]

Lovers, exes, kids, and milkmen as fiction fodder? Hey: it was, and shall always be, thus. If the book ends up being a classic, the author is forgiven (hire a medium and ask Saul Bellow). If the book vanishes without a trace, that's the other solution.

[LJ]

What great character studies, no matter who they derived from, especially the marvelous Hugh. Came seeking out reviews of it, however, and looking to understand why Olivier and Hugh land in LOS ANGELES but meet up with Boone/Bone and the lady in NEW YORK?
Very strange tilt of geography that never got explained...