Art and the antisemitism dilemma
What do you do when one of your favorite writers supported killing Jews?
A great many people in the U.S. are talking about censorship these days.
The right has been denuding school libraries of various works dealing with sexuality and gender issues, which has prompted an outcry against “book banning” from teachers’ groups and the progressive left in general.
The progressives, however, appear blissfully unaware of their hypocrisy, given the hurricane of censorship they have unleashed in recent years, which included everything from tearing down statues to ceasing publication of a Dr. Seuss book because of a single drawing.
It is easy to simply condemn both sides for all this, but unfortunately, the thing is more complicated than that.
This dilemma has been much on my mind because I am currently reading Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s extraordinary 1932 novel Journey to the End of the Night…