When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history, giving life to many of McCarthy’s most iconic characters across his celebrated novels and Hollywood films. For 47 years, Britt closely guarded her identity and her story. Until now.
  • steeznson@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 days ago

    The author is getting absolutely roasted on twitter for this article (and is retweeting all the criticism). You can check it out on nitter here. (As an aside I’m ecstatic that nitter is working again!)

    For what it’s worth I think the article is clumsy however I think that the journo had been given the scoop on the condition that Britta got some control over the angle the story took, and I think it’s fair that he didn’t betray her. He’s also satisfactorily acquainted with McCarthy’s novels and does a good job of identifying where this woman has influenced his writing.

    I think this whole controversy has uncomfortable undertones of the situation with David Foster Wallace posthumous articles that swept his abuse aside as the price of genius. We need to become better at separating art from artist in both senses: the work shouldn’t be tainted by the author (I’m pretty sympathetic to the “death of the author” approach for analysing works of art); but at the same time we need to avoid minimising criminal or immoral acts by our favourite artists. They are flawed humans and we need to examine them as such instead of mythologising them as a “genius”.