In The Public Domain

Spent a small part of the day - not nearly enough of it, actually - dipping into Neil Roberts's book on Ted Hughes and considering some of the issues raised by the sorry business of Sylvia Plath's suicide and Hughes's actions with regard to her work following that. Roberts does a very even-handed job in identifying the tensions between Hughes and some of his critics, and is particularly good on the faultlines in his relationship with Al Alvarez. He quotes some of the most haunting lines and details from The Savage God explaining just what Hughes must have found so hurtful about them, and why Alvarez thought it was reasonable to publish.

My attitude regarding this sort of thing is simple. We have made the mistake in the last century or so of over-privileging art and the artist to the extent that we ascribe a spurious importance to any and all details of the lives of those artists. The personal should always take precedence. What an artist or any individual wishes to remain private concerning their lives should remain so whatever the public interest involved. Biography, even at its best, is simply gossip of a higher order. When I first read The Savage God I thought it was a wonderful book, and still do, but I wish it had never been published.