Feet of Clay

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What to do with the beloved authors of our youth when we discover later in life that they have feet of clay? J.K. Rowling has been in the news for her attacks on the transgender community, and her arguments have been firmly rebutted by many people. For the fans of her Harry Potter books, however, there is still the question of how to think about the cherished adventures of the boy wizard with the lightning scar on his forehead.

Nathan J. Robinson, in Current Affairs, provides a way to reconsider one's attachment to Harry Potter and friends. Although I do not think as highly of Rowling's literary style as Robinson does, he gives an excellent description of Rowling's many strengths as a writer. Then he proceeds to demarcate the limits of Rowling's imagination with regard to transgender people. After which, he makes the really interesting move of reading Rowling's imaginative limits back into the politics of Harry Potter, showing that her stance on transgender rights is actually of a piece with her literary treatment of homosexuality and slavery in the books. Think Dumbledore and the house elves.

Rowling is far from being alone among admired writers whom we have come to regard as "problematic." Others who spring to mind are T. S Eliot (anti-Semitism), Philip Larkin (misogyny), Michel Houellebecq (Islamophobia), and Herman Hesse (narcissism). Yes, I'm naming members of my personal pantheon. I don't think I can follow Nathan J. Robinson's ultimate recommendation, "to leave these books behind, because to dwell too long in this world stunts our moral growth." How could I when, in their various challenges to orthodoxies, in their formal ironies, they have formed the moral imagination that enables me to grasp their limitations? I cannot leave them behind because they are in me. They are idols with clay feet, but perhaps fallen idols are less dangerous than the ones that stand strong and proud, like so many captains waving their swords on horseback.

If you missed our announcement about the 2020 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, find out here who the winner is. See below for details of a writing scholarship offered by a donor.

Jee Leong Koh
July 30, 2020

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