David Walliams in the bin

[carlitaclarita]

To throw all our David Walliams books out? I can’t even bear to take them to charity shops and I’m annoyed I even own them and annoyed they were so heavily pushed in schools.

What subtle messages did you dislike in Wilson?
My mother never let me read them because she thought they were overly depressing. I was always sad about that but I did read later that one of her books, Love Lessons, had a weird attitude to a teacher-student relationship. Is that what you meant?

I don't think Orwell's treatment of his wife falls under 'not being perfect'. I understand you're referring to the GC feminist struggle, and I agree with you, but Orwell's terrible treatment of his wife needs to be weighed up alongside his intellectual courage if evaluating his legacy through a feminist lens.

I agree the good he did certainly outweighs the good Walliams has done!

Yes, he helped write You Only Live Twice & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

As a general rec for anyone wanting more on his life, the biography Storyteller is a great one , another one would be Matthew Dennison's new one. And Michael Rosen's Fantastic Mr Dahl is a great one for kids.

Dickens tried to get his sane wife into an insane asylum too, to facilitate his dumping of her

It's not nonsense to not eat meat, you can be a vegetarian or pescatarian without becoming vegan.

And eating a lot of red meat does have demonstrable poor effects on health, a bit of meat is good but it shouldn't be overdone.

Sadly a lot of kids haven't seen through Walliams judging by his sales...

Dahl was an antisemite but he certainly wasn't a Nazi or Holocaust sympathiser. He was bad enough without exaggeration.

Which bio? He was certainly an awful husband on top of the antisemitism.

Enid Blyton has also been criticised.
luckily she wasnt cancelled.

I see them in EVERY SINGLE charity shop I go in! I tried one called ‘the fing’ with my 5 year old and it was totally pants.

How did he get so popular in the first place? I have to admit I’ve never read one of his books myself, but I know my kids enjoyed some of them. Surely that’s the key - he got / gets kids reading? He may not be a literary genius, but kids respond to his stories.

As others have said, many many authors and artists were / are less than perfect human beings. I absolutely loved Enid Blyton as a young child and although I can see her writing is riddled with unpleasant stereotypes now, she ignited my love of reading. It’s strange she wrote lovely warm stories about idealised families as she was apparently a terrible mum to her own kids - emotionally cold and very controlling (after her divorce, she stopped her kids from seeing their father and barely had time for them herself).

Dahl was very cruel to his wife, Dickens was a monster to his, Virginia Woolf - a feminist icon - was openly anti-semitic and horribly elitist in her diaries, Picasso was really awful to his wives & so was Hemingway, JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye) had relationships with teenage girls, Caravaggio was a violent criminal and murderer! Are we going to bin them all?

Like I say, perhaps Walliams isn’t a genius writer and is certainly a flawed human being - but there must be something kids respond to? Like Blyton?

God knows, we need to get kids reading… so if you don’t want the books, take them to a charity shop and let people choose for themselves.

DS got given / gifted a load of DW books. I've never given them to him and got rid. Clearly they were doing the rounds. I never liked Little Britain and I've always found him really uncomfortable. This was before anything came out.

Roald Dahl is dead. He is therefore not making any money out of his books.

When they're dead, we can make a decision about the separation of art and artist, whatever that may be.

When they're alive like Walliams - if you're buying the books, you're putting money in his pocket.

Key point.

It's about the talent v trash thing as much as anything. I don't rate Walliams full stop. I find him uncomfortable and unpleasant. I didn't want DS to read when he has other books which are better.

It's like that whole thought process experiment they did on C4 with art. If it's an artist who has cultural value that's high and you value it, then destroying the art doesn't feel right because you are destroying something that offers something in its own right that outweighs the individual. However if the individual hasn't produced something of that standard people don't feel the same and are happy to destroy because it's not something that offers society something of high enough cultural value to keep.

Certainly that's how I felt about Walliams before anything came out. I just found him deeply unpleasant and his subject matters not nice to read.

Tbh I was torn what to do and gave away rather than destroy but I did consider destroying as I did feel that if I didn't feel they were right for my kid, then perhaps it was wrong to give to others. Ive given a lot of DSs old books away to book reading schemes before so I do feel I've done the good thing of helping other kids read already.

In the end I didn't destroy because it felt so utterly wasteful and that bothered me too. I wish he'd stop writing the damn things!

My son loved DW books & TV shows, I’d gladly donate copies to a charity shop.

Exactly, this is cancel culture at its most absurd. If we have to destroy everything created by anyone who doesn’t meet our moral standards, we’d not only have to have a bonfire of almost all books, but we’d need to remove almost all exhibits from art galleries and shun most films.

What next? Should we demolish the local primary school because the architect was once seen buying a copy of Razzle when he in his teens? After all, Razzle is porn, and is porn is misogynistic and sexually exploitative , so he was responsible for supporting an industry culpable of sexual exploitation of women, and morally reprehensible as a result…. so his life’s work, no matter how good or useful it is, needs to be erased!

Yeah (recycle) bin them. My DD keeps getting them at school - currently reading Billionaire Boy.

I'm not interested in DW personal life, the books are bloody horrible! This one is fattist and just nasty.

Like I say, perhaps Walliams isn’t a genius writer and is certainly a flawed human being - but there must be something kids respond to? Like Blyton?

No! Enid Blyton was a racist! Her books therefore need to be burnt like Walliams’ books! We need to ensure that all our art and literature is only enjoyed if created by those who live up to our high, modern moral standards…. Or maybe we can just enjoy them for what they are, and not be such sanctimonious virtue signallers.

@carlitaclaritawhy are you annoyed they were heavily pushed in schools? The schools didn’t have insider knowledge on David Walliams antics… the books were extremely popular with children, as like him or loath him, a lot of children found them funny and his books got a lot of kids into reading - which is something schools are tasked with.

instead of being annoyed at the schools, why not be annoyed with the publisher and publishing industry who ignored all the complaints about Walliams for years and put profit before ethics. Maybe write them an email and demand some answers.

why not be annoyed at yourself for not scrutinising his books first before buying them!!

If some of his books are deemed offensive… why did you buy them?

this is not a drama, either put them in recycling or to charity and spend your energy looking for some other kid friendly authors that aren’t blighted by scandal!!!

I never pushed them to any of my primary classes at all.

But posters aren’t talking about buying his books, they’re talking about binning books they already have, which obviously has no impact on the author’s finances.

This

For me it was less about cancel culture and more about wanky horribleness. I just can't stand Walliams humour. I find it purile and horrid. There are authors who do the whole slightly naughty and your parents won't approve type fart jokes thing better too.

And I didn't destroy it. If I'm honest it's probably more me being a bit snobby about what DS reads and just thinking it's not good enough. I'm fine with him reading poo jokes and stupid shit but Walliams occupied a space that made me feel almost dirty and unpleasant myself watching him on tv. He makes my skin crawl and always has. With that in mind I just couldn't give the books to DS. I don't think that's a bad thing to care about the quality and content of what DS reads. If it was online content it wouldn't be controversial to consider what he was exposed to.

There so many great books out there, including by slightly problematic authors, I didn't want him to be reading something that isn't up to that standard. Walliams just not a great author and he's an unpleasant man. Fortunately I've not wasted any money on his books. But likewise because they were gifted to DS I also thought that it was wrong to merely destroy too because someone had cared enough to give them to me rather than the charity shop in the first place. They didn't seem mine to destroy.

He gives me the ick massively in a way that few do. I just can't verbalise it better. It's smug, it's arrogant. It's unpleasant.

Very naive… Dig beneath the surface and you’d be shocked.