I wish I were more familiar with the works of Milan Kundera, one of whose books I read approximately fourteen thousand years ago when Philip Roth compiled a series for Penguin of then unfamiliar Eastern European writers. This story reminds me of the lingering disgrace of literary theorist Paul de Man, whose "palling around" with Nazi collaborationists in Belgium as a young adult journalist came to haunt him post-mortem and, for all practical purposes, thoroughly crush his scholarly reputation. The "taint" smeared many of his professional associates, as well, in a bizarre, juvenile episode of academic name-calling and imputation of guilt by association. (And that’s why, Ruchira, I have left the "palling around" bit in the post, contrary to your request.)
My sense is that the literature is and ought to be protected. If Kundera’s novels were excellent, they remain so. I’m entirely open to the possibility that his writing is merely "intellectual pornography for mediocre Western readers," but that’s a judgment independent of his political misdeeds. The books are distinct from his reputation. I believe the same of de Man, whose work I continue to read and re-read. The irony, the hypocrisy in fact heighten the effect of the work.
Accidental Blogger 
5 responses to ““A long-buried scandal may taint a giant’s reputation” (Dean)”
You know, it occurs to me that Ruchira was right in the first place. “Palling around,” despite its contemporary valence, is inappropriate in light of what we know about Paul de Man’s association with collaborationist governed news and culture media. He not only associated with the journals in which his relatively youthful work was published, but he wrote at least one horrible, even if only hypothetical, piece critical of Jewish writers. It wasn’t, for that matter, even critical in the rich sense that term would come to bear during de Man’s ascendancy as a comparative literature theorist and scholar. It was simply dismissive, cold, haughty, and morally culpable, particularly given the historical context.
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An interesting comparison with de Man, Dean — although I gather from the NY Times article that there’s some doubt about whether Kundera actually denounced the Western intelligence agent, or is being maligned out of some combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and petty jealousy. Is the “official story” truth, or merely a fictive deception? Throw in a moody, dark-eyed lover forty years his junior and you’ve got the promising premise for a pomo novel right there.
Can someone please page Phillip Roth and ask him to stop working on yet another version of “Grumpy Old Man” and go back to his Kafka/metafictional roots to write this thing?
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Indeed, Andrew, the Kundera case seems far subtler in terms of motives and agents than de Man’s. What struck me was the implicit argument that the literary output must be reevaluated (and for the worse) because, as it might turn out, Kundera turned on a colleague.
I’m unacquainted with most of Roth’s work. There are only so many hours in the day, after all. But I am thrilled whenever I consider that some of his “Grumpy Old Man” stuff–Sabbath’s Theater, in particular–sits on the shelves of hundreds of public libraries across the nation. Meanwhile, prudes complain about Mark Twain or this or that young adult author. Little do they know what lurks beneath the covers of a bestseller!
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Moments after posting my second comment (to my own post, I admit–is that ethical?), I skim the NYT, where I find a feature story about urban fiction in public libraries. How apt. I’ve just remarked about the lurid hidden treasures one can find in a public library, and this story makes a news event out of the phenomenon. I wonder when this reporter last visited a library, urban, suburban, rural, or monastic. Can she be any more ludicrously wrong about what libraries are about? “[M]any libraries are only now catching up to their public,” she avers. Baloney. Public libraries have always been about tuning in to the linguistic and cultural identities, the tastes and whims of their communities. Some serve them well, others less well, but the only “catching up” pursued by many libraries is directed toward funding, renovation, and plain old making do.
I have two responses to the invocation of “the prim image of librarians.” (1) Yawn. (2) Snicker. How quaint, though, that it’s the cosmopolitan NYT that doesn’t have the journalistic balls to depict “a sexual frisson narrated in terms too graphic to reproduce here.”
Folks, when you head to your local library for a dose of that tough, lusty urban fiction, try the aforementioned Sabbath’s Theater. It’s got your frisson…right here.
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Ha-ha-ha! As the brother of a professional librarian and an admirer of the profession, I certainly agree that they are a lot more sophisticated and hip than most people think.
And you’re certainly right about Sabbath’s Theater, which is quite graphic. I once was present when the great Saul Bellow was discussing S.T. right after it came out — he admired the book, but since his granddaughter was present, felt the need to describe the character of Mickey Sabbath as “peeing” on his lover’s grave, rather than what he was really doing, masturbating. Bellow quickly realized that he was being overly protective of his adult grand-daughter, and described the grave-yard scene in a roundabout way using the Biblical story of Onan. And it’s not like Bellow was a shrinking violet prude or anything — but Roth loves kicking over taboos, and reveling in sexual excess, and it can be a bit much.
That said, I really like Roth’s next book American Pastoral better, because it’s about other people in the world, rather than an isolated authorial persona. The “Grumpy Old Man” books, however beautifully written, I find a bit unexciting. I guess I like social dynamics in fiction, perhaps because I’m somewhat isolated myself.
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