“To read about Levant is to be struck by how his seeming compulsion to blurt the details of his mental illnesses into the nearest microphone foreshadowed the modern-day “oversharers” who chronicle each twist and turn of their private lives. Even so, there was more to him than his madness, and the story of his career as a musician, sometime actor, and media figure avant la lettre will be of interest to anyone curious about what it meant to be famous in America at midcentury.” – Commentary
Tag: 02.19
So The Artist Has Misbehaved. Do S/He And The Work Now Have To Disappear?
Lionel Shriver: “For reasons that escape me, artists’ misbehavior now contaminates the fruits of their labors, like the sins of the father being visited upon the sons. So it’s not enough to punish transgressors merely by cutting off the source of their livelihoods, turning them into social outcasts, and truncating their professional futures. You have to destroy their pasts. Having discovered the worst about your fallen idols, you’re duty-bound to demolish the best about them as well.” – Harper’s