How to Pull Back the Curtain: Heroes, Flaws, Boundaries and Creativity

I think a lot about exposure. I guess it comes with the territory of being a writer, and a communications and digital marketing professional. I think about it as a mom.

How much to share – how much of oneself do you pour into your art? My best friend once told me that she would never allow anyone to read her poetry, if she wrote, because it would be like having them read her diary and that perspective puzzled me.

Earlier this week, I watched neuropsychiatrist Graeme Yorston’s analytical video, Flawed Genius, on John Steinbeck. “Never meet your heroes,” he forewarns, as he begins to illustrate the monster that Steinbeck was, particularly to his wives and children.

I read the The Grapes of Wrath as a teenager in High School, his masterpiece on the injustice of poverty, oppression and hopelessness. As I finished it, I remember feeling stunned, just blown away and clearly, I was not the only one. The book sold over 400,000 in the year it was published and has been celebrated, banned and burned ever since. The copy I had was old even then, In fact, I think it was a first edition and naively, I lent it to someone who claims to have lost it. What was not lost was the power of that story, it’s stayed with me all of my life even as I still grieve the loss of my torn and ratty book and dust jacket. Apparently, it’s worth thousands of dollars today.

I never really gave the man, the writer, his personal life much of thought. It was his art that blew me away. Apparently, he wrote the book in a burst, in a mere five months, an incredibly stunning feat.

My husband and I have this conversation often, about flawed genius and if we can still enjoy the art or if we need to banish it. How far back do we pull back the curtain? Can we compartmentalize the art and detach ourselves from the flawed person behind it?

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