It's too bad to read these reports about his lecherousness, because he was without question a giant in the US world of letters.
In fact it's probably more common in the great men and women, than in the puny average moralists who never achieved greatness, but also never dared go into any excess as people, and had far far less chances to indulge in such things...
Let me add somethings of importance then: one can be thief and/or murderer (like e.g. Caravaggio, François Villon, Burroughs, Jean Genet, Cellini, etc.) and still be a great writer, poet, painter, sculptor, etc.
>I will not, however, accept that the contributions either justify or excuse harmful behavior.
Could be the worse, the harmful behavior could inform the contributions.
Good people can still make great art (Bach for one), but they don't make great art of the kind bad people make, nor do they have the same access as bad people to express those impulses and that side of humanity.
If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different.
But the claim is that he was making advances on people who didn't welcome them. This is especially a problem since he was an influential professor with power over their careers.
Even for professors, where the natural state for many is social awkwardness, you have some obligation to read the signs of when your behavior is unwanted.
That was part of my point. One can be crash or sexist like that and still a great writer/thinker/etc.
The other ("If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different") of course goes without saying!
Lecherous / womanising professor is a popular trope.
e.g. Donald Sutherland in Animal House
Lots of amazing writers, poets, scientists, are terribly flawed, depressed, tortured souls. Hell, even we here on HN debate every day the ridiculous company founders and VCs whose behavior creates interesting enterprises but leads to inevitable problems later.
We seem to want saints who pique our attention, stimulate our fancy, and amuse/entertain us. But as some witty person said, living in heaven with the saints would be worse than hell.
One can imagine a politician who is a thief for example, stealing public money or who uses the state to harm his personal enemies, but is still a genius of public policy, great for steering the economy, a great leader at war, and so on. In the end, the amount of money they stole e.g. (in the case of the embezzler) is insignificant compared to the good he hid for the country as a leader.
You'd replace them with some "good person" if said good person's weren't as good?
And here's the catch, history accounts are filled with such people.
It’s not about declaring some people “good” before hand. It’s more about spotting when power is being abused and giving someone else a go.
A government area very close to here recently arrested a politician who was also the most popular politician in the country (by % votes). He’s now been found guilty of some crimes the scale of which is quite small compared to the absolute scale of the area he ran. But all of his decisions and appointments will now be examined. There are definitely plus and minuses to his downfall. But on balance I’m glad that people didn’t continue to turn a blind eye to his corruption, even if some of it “got the job done” faster.
so which is it? should sexual assault be condemned, or should it be celebrated, like you're doing here? to be clear, i care less about where you stand than i care that you pick a fucking stance.
I personally have no knowledge of those serious claims. I don't read in any reports here or elsewhere that Harold Bloom came close to perpetrating sexual assault. Do you, or do you have personal knowledge? If not maybe you should think about your own relativism as you try to turn every possible act by a person you don't know into a rallying cry to fuel your righteous indignation?
I was commenting that the people who have the most creativity often display severe personality flaws. I wasn't excusing anything. Seems like you're quite angry?
People who actually achieve something are just subject to more scrutiny.
Also changing social mores means you are almost guaranteed to have done something improper if you have been publicly exposed for several decades.
Similarly I fully support Handke winning the Nobel this year, but it doesn't mean I can't deplore his support of Milosevic.