Literature and separating the art from the artist

People have been having the debate over separating the art from the artist across all mediums since there were art forms. I would argue that literature is one form where that separation is impossible due to the cerebral nature of writing and the use of one’s imagination, memory and innate biases needed to create a work of writing.

I have had this thought for a while and it was reinforced when I was listening to Jorge Luis borges’s non-fiction essays and he made a similar argument and went on to elucidate how part of why Shakespeare is so legendary is because you cannot find the personality of Shakespeare in any of his works, which also feeds the conspiracy that Shakespeare may have been a multitude of persons.

I felt compelled to post this after DNFing Needful Things by Stephen King. I used to love King’s work as a child and wanted to revisit him but was disappointed by the cringey catchphrases, his inability to write characters of color, and his idealized cop heroes. Then it hit me again that that’s just Stevie King; a proud New Englander from small town, mostly white Maine, with an affinity for the police force and baseball. I was underwhelmed by Needful things but still respect Stephen King as a writer, but just like every other author it is impossible for King to not inject his works with his ‘self’. King is an extreme case of this too where some of his stories are well documented direct allegories to his personal life ie. The Shining, Misery, Tommyknockers.

In Art (painting, drawing, sculpture etc), cinema, and music there is a degree of separation between the audience and the mind of the artist. I would use Picasso, Tarantino and Michael Jackson as examples. (Cinema is interesting and may be more nuanced because it has so many moving parts.)