SEPARATING ART FROM THE ARTIST
Roald Dahl was anti-semitic. Ron Charles wonders if we need his family to speak up.
Thirty years after Roald Dahl's death, his family and the Roald Dahl Story Co. have issued an apology for the writer's anti- Semitic remarks.
Their short statement was found tucked away on the Roald Dahl website like a Golden Ticket hidden inside a Wonka Bar.
“Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us,” it reads, “and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations.”
This is a perfect concoction of corporate ingredients: Dahl's slurs, only vaguely alluded to, are subsumed within a reiteration of how great Dahl's stories are. Readers are reassured that through some fortunate miracle, his hostility toward Jews is another educational aspect of his work: “We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.”
Dahl's anti- Semitism has always been the unfriendly BFG in the room. The only mystery is what kept his rich heirs quiet for so long. The author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda and other classics trafficked in all the usual slanders about Jews, including nefarious financial power and control of the media. In a 1983 interview in The New Statesman, Dahl told Canadian journalist Michael Coren: “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity toward non-jews. I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.”
There was, alas, no late change of heart. In 1990, the year he died, Dahl gave another interview in which he said, “We all know about Jews and the rest of it.” To clear up any ambiguity, he added, “I'm certainly anti-israeli, and I've become anti- Semitic.”
The obituaries for Dahl in The New York Times and The Washington Post made no mention of these statements. And Hollywood has done its best to preserve that lucrative omission. In 2016, Steven Spielberg, who directed an adaptation of The BFG, said, “I wasn't aware of any of Roald Dahl's personal stories.” In 2018, Netflix reportedly paid US$1 billion for the rights to create an animated series based on Dahl's works. Not bad for a Hitler apologist.
Dahl's defenders will claim that's unfair. He was a genius, after all, one of the greatest children's writers of the 20th century. Allowing a few anti- Semitic remarks to overshadow his novels would only deny readers the pleasure of his stories. Indeed, I read Dahl's books to my daughters when they were little, and I would still recommend them. But I wish we could move beyond this moment of hollow contrition.
Things were easier in the middle of the 20th century, when the so-called New Critics held sway. They insisted that only what's on the page should be considered. All external issues, such as an author's actions and other statements, were largely irrelevant.
But such convenient demarcations now feel wholly artificial, an intellectual version of “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” We live in an era torn by disagreements about how to regard artists' complicated lives.
Given the false choice between amnesia and cancel culture, we're still coming to grips with the “revelation” that creators we love can say and do despicable things. At a panel discussion at a literary conference years ago, an alarmed member of the audience asked Cynthia Ozick if Edith Wharton was an anti- Semite. With weary exasperation, Ozick replied, “They were all anti- Semites.”
The Dahl family's tardy acknowledgment sounds like Roald and the Giant Bleach, a strategy closer to money laundering than repentance. If they feel some responsibility for their benefactor's comments, they'll need to do something besides label them “incomprehensible.”