The Second Death of Pablo Neruda

It's so fascinating to me how, in the minds of certain educated people, the fact that the author of a work did abhorrent things makes that work unethical or pernicious or taboo to consume and appreciate. Hasn't scholarly society adopted the stance that the "death of the author" is the preferable way to consume literature? And even if we're intentionally reflecting on the author and his life, the fact that they were sometimes heinous doesn't preclude the fact that they were also sometimes beautiful. Just as we all are. The idea that we will perforce fall into the trap of idolizing someone whose work we love, and "normalizing" all the garbage that they did, is self-righteous paternalistic nonsense.

We do abhorrent things today, and we will be looked upon by the future as backwards savages; do we want to be judged with mercy and an eye toward the beauty that we have in common, or with contempt for all our miserable failings?

Glad the New Yorker is going through the dirty linen and family tabloid stuff of a foreign writer who has been dead for over a half century.

Harold Ross never ran a great magazine, but even he kept such dreck out. This is more of that post-Gottlieb Tina Brown change.

I think I would have been happier if I hadn't read that.

Nevertheless, Chile remains a beautiful country, its people, beautiful, and his poetry is no different and remains as beautiful.