Why We Shouldn’t Cancel Good Art By Bad Boys

If Neil Gaiman’s life today were a scene in one of his own stories for children of all ages, the scandal darkening his shiny global stardom would be revealed as the handiwork of the dream-eaters. But those dastardly villains, whose diet consists of the eyeballs (not to speak of the hopes and dreams) of innocent people, are defeated in the end. Our hero — the creative genius — would triumph over the fantastical creatures, aided and advised throughout the nightmare by a female friend. She will have travelled the same path as the artist because she wants to be along for the ride. Besides, she feels entirely safe with him.Unfortunately, this plotline won’t work in real life. Gaiman is a consummate master of storytelling in any medium — comics, television, film, poetry, prose fiction — but his own saga is no longer so easy to take to a successful conclusion.Right now, he stands accused of gross sexual and emotional abuse by at least eight young women in different parts of the world. The allegations of deviant and violent behaviour as well as coercive control go back over some years and the accusers were overwhelmingly young, some 40 years his junior. Gaiman, now 64, has flatly denied the “horrible stories”.No matter what happens from here on, some of Gaiman’s cult following is outraged. Horrified readers have been posting on social media the decision to tip their fallen god’s books “into the recycling bin” or bag them up for the charity shop. Some have vowed to boycott the forthcoming second season of The Sandman, the TV adaptation of Gaiman’s acclaimed comic book series. His three publishers have said they don’t have any new projects planned with him, though no one is suggesting his 50 books will be taken out of print.Overall, there is shock but little hysteria even though JK Rowling has denounced “the strange silence of the literary world” and compared Gaiman to disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.There are at least three possible reasons for the tepid response. These accusations come at a hinge point in the West’s culture wars. The new season is all about the Palm Beach billionaire take on trad wife, coupled with the manly-man worldview of podcast bros, crypto bros, tech bros and the bro of bros, Elon Musk.With Donald Trump and America’s MAGA right taking full control of the world’s most militarily and economically powerful country, there is waning enthusiasm for the #MeToo movement’s seven-year push to hold powerful men accountable for their treatment of women.Of course, any hyperbolic reaction to the allegations against Gaiman must also acknowledge hard reality: These may be hard to prove, legally, or in any conclusive way. Gaiman’s young accusers, who were once either his fans, employees, or otherwise dependent on him in some way, continued a friendly, even loving, dialogue with him during and after the alleged abuse.Cue the writer’s insistence, just days ago: “I am not a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”And then there is the question that crops up every now and then: Should great art be judged by its artist’s behaviour and punished accordingly with memory erasure? Is damnatio memoriae, which amounts to modern-day cancellation, the right way to deal with phenomenal work by morally compromised creative artists?Today it is Gaiman, a literary rock star whose books have sold 50mn copies worldwide. Yesterday, Alice Munro. The Canadian Nobel Literature laureate wrote in so nuanced a way about women and girls but her daughter says she did nothing when learning about sexual abuse at the hands of her second husband.The day before yesterday, it was VS Naipaul, also a Nobel laureate, whose authorised biography reveals base whoremongering, appalling treatment of his sad, sick wife and disposable mistress, exquisite meanness, cruelty amounting to sadism and race-baiting. And further back in time, there was a whole clutch of deplorable greats: John le Carre. Cormac McCarthy. Lewis Carroll. William Faulkner.There are faint echoes of the Gaiman affair in nearly all of these. Le Carre, a constant philanderer, picked very young women, including the au pair looking after his youngest son. The thrice-married McCarthy was 42 when he began a relationship with a 16-year-old and is said to have feared being found guilty of statutory rape as they travelled across the US-Mexico border.For all the primness of Alice in Wonderland, Carroll did have his photographs of naked little girls. As for Faulkner, he positively relished being horrid in the name of art. When his 12-year-old daughter asked him to postpone one of his alcoholic binges until after her birthday celebrations, he famously refused, telling her, “No one remembers Shakespeare’s children.”From Caravaggio, murderer and lover of a pre-pubescent boy, to Gaiman, alleged abuser, here’s a truth not explicitly acknowledged: If we only permitted art by artists with unimpeachable moral standards, our libraries and galleries would be bare.