To compare India Knight to Alice Munro?

[Heyyoupleasekeepgoing]

Just finished the brilliant piece in the New Yorker Magazine Here about how Alice Munro ignored the abuse of her daughter by her husband, and the general opinion (although easier to hold now she is dead) that her work should no longer be respected and read as it was.

AIBU to think of the vastly less celebrated but nonetheless still writing for the Times etc India Knight, who stood by her own paedophile partner (Eric Joyce) and was named as a mitigating factor in his sentencing for viewing and downloading the most extreme category of CSA - ie supporting his support of the severe abuse of someone’s children (and babies according to the court case)? As their promised “explanations” have not been forthcoming, please can we stop publishing/ reading her now?

Just me, then

God no, not just you. Awful woman.

Could you Pm me the list of everyone squeaky clean with a squeaky clean spouse that I'm allowed to read please?

There’s surely a large different between “squeaky clean” and “supports and remains in a romantic relationship with a convicted paedophile”.

I'm sick to the back teeth of cancel culture. People can make up their own minds on who they want to read.

I'm capable of reading an author without feeling that I'm condoning their behaviour. I admire the work of artists, authors and entertainers who have done dodgy things and have dodgy spouses.

Her personal life, however morally compromised, doesn’t detract from her genius for me. I don’t read her in the same way as I used to, and I was absolutely horrified when the story broke, but I don’t think her work should be banned.

India Knight writes vacuous nonsense and wouldn’t have a Times column without her nepotistic connections, so luckily there’s no need to consider avoiding her on moral grounds.

But no, I don’t want a paedophile apologist advising me on what eye shadow to wear over my cornflakes and newspaper on a Sunday morning funnily enough.

Not just you. I don't read her stuff now.

Just today my mum said something along the lines of men being cancelled for doing something blurry, she didn't quite say it, but I got the gist just from her eye contact, is wrong.

My eye contact back, I didn’t say anything, told her no, I do not agree! She knows what happened to me that time. I always thought it was a one off. And that it didn’t affect my life.

But now I’m older, I think it did. And I know that women are much less likely now to sweep things under the carpet (which was the way, where I come from). It wasn’t a one off for my cousin…

The article the op provided a link to is really disturbing on so many levels but I'm sure there's few surprises within it. Children are abused and adults cover it up whether they're award winning novelists or not. Why should we behave as if we're surprised.

India Knight??? Or Alice Munro? India Knight is a hack. Nobody is missing out by not being able to read her beauty column.

This is ridiculous. Apparently Enid Blyton was no angel in her personal life. Should children stop reading her books.

That article is so waffly!

Alice Munro! I don’t think I’ve read anything by IK in about 20 years, and that would have been some vacuous lifestyle schtik.

To be fair, most children have already stopped reading them. Lots of them haven’t aged well (not for “woke reasons”, they are not far off 100 years old and just seem very old fashioned)

Secret seven are still ok, but they were always the most suburban and “normal” of her series.

I’ve never read much of Knight’s stuff but I’m extremely pleased she no longer seems to be on Times Radio. Dreadful woman.

I do understand that some people are able to separate art from the artist. I hugely struggle with this and I’m not sure it’s “cancel culture” to say I find your actions/opinions abhorrent and I can’t enjoy your work any more.

As a previous comment above, a newspaper beauty column is hardly “art” and I wouldn’t shed a tear for someone who lost their job because they “stood by their man” if their man was a perverted criminal.

In principle I think that we ought to separate the artist from the art, but it's tangled, isn't it. I feel no urge to read either of these particular authors now even though it wasn't actually them who abused children. I've no doubt though that AM's daughter was brutally hurt by her mother choosing her partner over her.

Then i wonder if I do the same? Not to that extent but I do have a new partner after the death of my husband, which sometimes means that I choose him over my son in things that seem minor to me, possibly not to my son.

Ultimately I think whether people choose to read an author is 100% up to them. I think policing people's associations is a very dark purity spiral - we've just had a scandal in my profession where a head honcho has been found to be following Tommy Robinson on Twitter. There have been action committees, open letters, statements of apology etc. And I am both sure that TR is a force of evil that that person shouldn't have been following and that i have blocked, and annoyed that any adult is having something so tiny dragged into a huge public palaver. It cannot end well.

Actually I agree with you. She isn't as popular with younger children these days.

I've never sought out IK's work, although I've read the odd piece here and there. Tbh I can't remember the last time a mention of her crossed my path.

I'm not feeling deprived tbh, but also not especially keen on ideological cancelling.

However, there's no doubt that there are a whole slew of people I can't be bothered to read or watch because of things they've said and done. I have no opinion re: those that do read/watch.

That's personal choice, and god knows there's enough out there that we can be choosy.

Dont think children can relate. Imagine packing off a group of children under 12 to live with a disinterested distracted uncle who would get the cook to give them a packed lunch and then totally unsupervise them around beaches etc for days on end!

Yep. EB hasn't worn well at all. All the working class people are evil or weirdly servile for reasons that aren't clear - somehow I think there was still enough unconscious indoctrination about "the correct order of things" back in the 70s/80s that it passed right over my head.

It’s the perennial problem of children’s fiction — the adults need to be dead, removed, geographically distant, useless or actively evil.

india Knight is dreadful. I do judge her morals. Eric Joyce is evil, but she stood by him and defended what he did. As far as I know they are still together.

I didn't know about Alice Munro. I love her writing so I'm questioning myself now. do I stop reading her? Or is her work still ok? And if so, why?

Should I differentiate between them just because one writes well and the other writes dross? Doesn't that make me a hypocrite?

Thank you for the link to that article OP.
I thought it went to great lengths to reveal the whole story and the parts each played in it.