I have, on occasion, when confronted with a growing list of famous authors who were terrible people, thought to myself, “Well, at least Asimov was a stand up guy.” Friends, he was not. He apparently progressed from requiring a kiss before signing an autograph to grabbing women’s breasts instead of shaking their hands upon introduction. I am very saddened to learn this.
Which brings us back to the age-old question - can we, should we, separate the actions of the person from the works that they create? I know that this will taint my enjoyment of his work. Will I ever read it or recommend it again? I am not certain. How about you?
I did not know this. It will absolutely affect how I enjoy his work going forward, quite possibly to the point of not bothering to re-read his stuff at all. Reading a book is sharing the writer’s mind, to some extent at least. When it is an ugly mind (like a bully), it makes it hard to properly identify with a protagonist in that writer’s story. There are exceptions- Caesar was a thoroughly unpleasant sort in many ways, but I can read his stuff. But with fiction, not so much
I believe there are people, including famous authors, who genuinely are stand-up guys (and gals), but I’m wary of pinning my hopes on any particular individual.
I have a growing list of famous people whom I liked, and in some sense still do like—I admire or enjoy or have benefited from things they’ve said or done or work they’ve produced—yet they’ve also done some really awful things, things that make me sad and mad and disgusted with them. And, yes, Asimov is on that list.
(Reading the OP’s linked article makes me sad, not just about Asimov, but also about those times, when a person could get away with behaving like that.)
George Orwell on the subject and I’m not going the way you probably expect with this:
The Vicar of Bray was a churchman who remained a churchman in a time and place, 16th Century England, when it was impossible for a devout churchman to accomplish such a task; in short, he was a turncoat, one who moved with the winds of change quite freely, and who had no fixed ideology, for any ideology would have gotten him run out of his position (if not killed) at one time or another during his tenure.
The point isn’t the vivacious vicar’s vacillating verities, it’s the fact that people can do good works which long outlive them and their sins. Plant a tree, plant a love and wonder for science, it doesn’t really matter: The good act will grow and bear fruit long after anyone who remembers the bad acts is dead.
This isn’t about anyone retroactively becoming a good person. People are what they were, and the dead should be remembered with clear eyes. However, the actions you perform have results, good and bad, and, after a certain point, all of those actions and all of the results and all of the results of the results mix to the point that all that really matters is the net effect, whether the sum total is positive or negative. Everyone who was harmed, or was benefited, by the direct actions is dead, and the living only get the results of the results of the results.
As for me, I can’t be without Asimov. I read him too young and too deeply, so there’s no way to extricate him from me. I think the same can be said of the science fiction field as a whole and, therefore, all mass culture. We can acknowledge what he did, and we definitely need to, but chopping down all of the trees would be impossible, and it would be foolish of us to try.
This was some dirty little secret, either - he was so well known for it, he’d get invited to give speeches at sci-fi cons about the pleasures of groping women without their consent.
Edit: which I see is mentioned in the OP’s link.
Asimov used to go the MIT SF Society picnics when he lived in Boston. I went to the last one he was at. He hit on a friend of mine who also went. That was despite being there with Willy Ley’s daughter, despite being married, and his son David, who he was nasty to.
He cultivated a reputation as a lech, alas it wasn’t just an act.
Well, that’s upsetting to read. I’m not sure what to think. I’d heard hints of this before, but it didn’t resonate as much with me then (35+ years ago). The most charitable thing to say is that times have really changed. With respect to my response, that apparently includes myself.
To a certain extent, this gets into whether it is correct to view the actions of people from the past with today’s moral standards. Asimov died in 1992, and the photo in the linked story was taken in 1967. That was over a half-century ago. Attitudes change. (Note that this is certainly not intended to be an excuse for his behavior.)
There are numerous examples of famous people from the past whose actions would now be considered reprehensible, from Columbus’s treatment of the natives to George Washington owning slaves. I’m sure there are things that we do today that our descendants will look at with disdain or worse, like killing animals for food, or our cavalier disregard of the effects of climate change.
On the other hand, reading this article actually gives me some hope, too. Asimov’s behavior would absolutely not be tolerated today, regardless of his fame or influence in the field, so in that sense, society appears to be moving in the right direction.
I refuse to believe that all men, throughout history, were bullies that took advantage of those weaker than they were. Given that, I find his behavior repugnant. I do understand that different times have different social mores. I don’t think that knowledge will change my opinion in this case.
I already knew he had quite the reputation as a dirty old man. Didn’t know he was a groper too, but I’m not at all surprised. The picture in the article linked is great. Classic “ewwww this creepy dude is touching me”. I’m always amazed at men who do this, and basically never seem to know (or care) that the effect they have is … disgust. Personally, I don’t really get off on doing things that disgust other people.
I enjoyed his writing decades ago. It does not age well though. Let’s relegate it to the “golden years” of crappy writing, and creepy old gropers.
Right. Claims that someone can be excused as a product of their times can often be exploded by gaining a deeper knowledge of other people who were a product of the same times. However, while it may be impossible to separate the personality from the work, it’s also impossible to separate the work from the culture it influenced, if the work was big enough. Asimov’s work was definitely big enough, and I think it was a net positive. Doesn’t redeem him, of course; good thing his work is so big he can’t tarnish it.
After Alfred Bester died in 1987, Asimov wrote this about Bester:
"In any case, he always gave me the biggest hello it was possible to hand out… He enclosed me in a bear hug and kissed me on the cheek. And occasionally, if I had my back to him, he did not hesitate to goose me.
This discomfited me in two ways. First, it was a direct physical discomfiture. I am not used to being immobilized by a hug and then kissed,and I am certainly not used to being goosed.
A more indirect discomfiture and a much worse one was my realization that just as I approached Alfie very warily when I saw him before he saw me, it might be possible that young woman approached me just as warily, for I will not deny to you that I have long acted on the supposition that hugging, kissing, and goosing was a male prerogative, provided young women (and not aging males) were the target. You have no idea how it spoiled things to me when I couldn’t managed to forget that the young women might be edging away." (bolding mine).
Urgh…
Like Derleth, I won’t stop reading Asimov, but I won’t deny that he failed a basic test of decency.
My take? There are so many talented artists out there who don’t get a chance to showcase their work because they get edged out by brand recognition. Screw Asimov and his ilk. Take all his shit off the shelves and put up works by new authors who are still around to create yet more art if only they can get just a sliver of the attention Asimov got and maybe finally living off the proceeds from developing their art rather than whatever job they have to do to put food in the table today.
I think his attitude was probably something like “who gives a shit what some girl thinks?” Asimov’s behavior is about exerting power over women.
My take on bad behavior by artists is that you have to balance the quality of the work and the severity of the offense. I acknowledge that by this measure, Hitler could have redeemed himself if he had been a really, really good painter. It tends not to work in the extremes.
Ultimately, lots of artists were horrible people, John Lennon beat his wife, George Harrison used to bet sex with his groupies in card games, Chuck Berry was a gigantic creep, and Captain Kangaroo was apparently a huge asshole. I think that maybe we just acknowledge that truth: I like this art, but not the person who produced it.
Yes, this is what we should be going for.
But it’s hard. Emotionally, often the art and the artist become linked. And if i find out the artist is a giant asshole, that does tarnish the art for me somewhat.
I have a ceramic vase in my house that I love. It is somewhat plain, but I had a one hour conversations with the (moderately) famous artist who made it. He seemed to me at the time to be a really nice, kind, thoughtful interesting man. I REALLY don’t want to find out I am wrong, because I have nice thoughts and good feelings whenever I see the vase.
It was the previous generations’ equivalent of a dick pic. Never heard of a straight woman who thought that was appealing, when done as an introduction.
I also heard that his son is (was?) autistic and supported himself by distributing child pornography, in the pre-web era.
I think that if you are going to read books, you are going to read books written, in the most part, by people who relate to people by sitting in a study writing, better than they relate to people in person.
I’m kind of the same way. I don’t know he needs to be removed from the shelves, but goddamn, we’re living in a golden age of science fiction right now, and AFAICT Becky Chambers and NK Jemisin and Yoon Ha Lee and Anne Leckie and Nnedi Okorafor and Catherynne Valente aren’t being assholes to everyone around them.
I try really hard to only invest emotionally in the art produced, not the artist. It helps that I assume that everyone is an asshole until proven otherwise. The only person who I would be devastated to find out was a creep would be Mr. Rogers; he’s the one exception to my “everyone’s an asshole” rule.
It gets trickier if the artist is still alive and my consuming their work financially benefits them. Then, I think there is an ethical consideration to be made as to whether or not you want to support this person. For someone like Asimov, he’s dead so buying his books doesn’t benefit him any more.
It’s more complicated than that. It’s not just that lots of artists were horrible, unlikable people. It’s that lots of artists (and non-artists, too) were/are horrible, likable people. They have sides or aspects that are unlikable, horrible, deplorable, toxic. And they also have sides or aspects that are likable, admirable, praiseworthy, lovable.
Philip Norman claimed that his biography of John Lennon portrays John as “an ultimately adorable human being.” I think it does, but I think it also portrays John as a raging asshole.
I like the Isaac Asimov that I’ve encountered in some of his own writings and things others have written about him. I dislike the Isaac Asimov that I’ve encountered in the linked article and other things I’ve learned about him. And I think both reactions are fair and reflect who he really was.
I met Asimov once. We had a very nice chat for about 15 minutes. He didn’t lay a hand on me. Or any other body part.