If you discovered that the writer of a book you live an frequently re read....

[BertrandRussell]

....had been posthumously but credibly accused of serious sexual assault agaist children, would you bin the book?
I didn’t give my children two of my favourite childhood authors because of subsequent revelations. But wondering what people would do about this. To make it worse, it’s a book I have given and recommended to many “baby” feminists because it presents many of the issues in an easy to digest fictional form.

I feel the same OP. I can't read Anne Perry either because of what she did. It was premeditated and she was old enough to know better, so I just can't. No problem with other people making the choice to read the books. I just can't feel good about it myself, so I choose not to read them.

Oh, what did Anne Perry do?

OMG, I've just googled, I had no idea and have loved her books.

Good grief

deirdre.net/marion-zimmer-bradley-its-worse-than-i-knew/

Enid Blyton was supposed to have been fairly unpleasant to her own children....

“Enid Blyton was supposed to have been fairly unpleasant to her own children....”

No loss binning her books.

I knew this would be about MZB. I was gutted too, Bertrand

I cannot bring myself to read it again and I haven't recommended it to anyone since I found out.

I loved it so much as a late teen that I practically know it by heart anyway.

I really struggle with Gabrielle Garcia Márquez after reading Memories of My Melancholy Whores. I try to tell myself maybe he was suffering from dementia and that’s why he thought it was an appropriate book. But it’s such dirty old man smut that it’s really put a weird edge on some of my favourite books.

I would bin it.
I know it wouldn't make any difference but I'd never feel right reading it or giving it to someone else after I knew so there's not much else to do with it.

I don't think I'd recommend them now. Or read them again tbh. O just found this out today and it's really nasty.

Rape of your slaves was normal in the ancient world. Do we bin the classics?

Oh come on.

I'm serious. Save your anger for those being abused now, for the bastards who are still alive to be thrown in jail.

squeezy what this author did was not normal at the time so how is the ancient world at all relevant?

No loss binning her books. Enid Blyton popped into my head and that was my immediate thought, although I enjoyed reading many of them as a child.

As a couple of other posters have said, I think the novels, visual art, music, or other creations are separate from their creators. Getting something from them isn't he same as being friends with the creator, or supporting them (if dead). It's not like a boycott, you're not going to reduce abuse or further stigmatise perpetrators by avoiding their work.

Perhaps if we found it easier to hold in our heads the idea that a person can do absolutely atrocious things and still produce work of merit, then some instances of abuse would be less easily overlooked. Mentally it's easier for us to split the world into good and bad, but it's not like that in reality.

With that in mind, I would refer to what I knew about the author/artist/whatever, in an age-appropriate way.

So you’d listen to the Lost Prophets?

What happened to Rolf Harris portrait of the queen?

Assuming that question was aimed at me, noblegiraffe, in principle, yes, I might. (In actuality, no, I can't recall what their music sounds like, so it's obviously never appealed.) I'm saying 'might' because it's rare for music to mean very much to me and I listen to very little. But if I translate it back to an author or visual artist example then yes, potentially, whilst feeling extremely troubled by what they had done and wondering about how it had come to that.

I can happily shed all her books- just having a struggle with The Shattered Chain. It’s such a fabulous feminist book!

I'm not sure to be honest. With some artists it's easier to separate the art from the artist's crime than with others. Maybe the further back in time something occurred the easier it is to compartmentalise.

I don't give a second thought to Caravaggio's violent life. But with someone like Eric Gill however his foul crimes are all I can think about when I see mention of him. But I don't think I'd in any way judge another person for displaying a work of his.

And there are so few easy to read feminist books with brilliant stories!

I think this is partly about how we hold women, and feminist women especially, to a higher standard than men - not that many people would condone men abusing children but it’s somehow just so much more transgressive when women do it. It’s interesting how each of us respond to this on a sort of case by case basis, how we can sometimes separate these wonderfully imaginative outputs from the darker acts of some creators but not others.

That’s interesting @WhydidiEatThat. That was certainly my thinking when I first heard ages ago that she had shielded her abusing husband. I cut her slack for that. Discovering very late in the day all the other stuff has shaken me.

On the whole I try to separate art from the artist but sometimes its not possible. For me its a bigger problem with more more recent artists who lack even the social mores of the day. Child abuse may have been concealed in the 60s and 70s but it was never a socially accepted and encouraged practice in the way that racism, sexism and other "isms" were.

There had been rumours floating around after her death but mostly in connection with her excusing and supporting Breen. Sometimes rationalised by uncomprehending fans in terms of her possibly being subject to his influence. However when the children went public years after her death it was a whole level worse than anyone had really appreciated I think. It was certainly a frequent and shocked discussion point in the run up to WorldCon that year and inevitably many more stories came out.

I can't ask her "WTF?" but I can't read her books now either. They went in the bin, along with Mieville and a handful of others who I can't read without seeing the text as hypocritical cant after revelations about their treatment of others.