Before we start. One production note. In this episode, we again have quotes from Roll Dall. Rather than just have me read them in my terrible British accent, we decided to bring them to life, so we use an actor's performance and some custom software to create a Doll like voice. Okay, onto the episode, Roll Dall says, comfortably at home giving which should be a casual, breezy phone interview to a popular magazine called The New Statesman. It's nineteen eighty three.
Doll is at this point, without question, the most famous and most successful children's author of all time. The BFG came out just last year and was a phenomenon. The Witches is about to be published. A critical acclaim on the phone with Dall is Michael Koran, a young theater critic. Koran is just out of college. He's not an experienced journalist or some sort of master interrogator. This isn't some kind of brilliant gotcha moment, but Doll is in one
of his dark moods. Koran asked about a book review that Dall recently wrote. The book centered on the very thorny topic of the Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The previous year. Doll decides he doesn't just want to talk about the book or his review of it. He wants to widen things. He wants to talk about the Holocaust, you know, the generational tragedy where six million Jewish men, women and children were systematically exterminated. It might be the most softball topic
in all of journalism. Anyone in their right mind recognizes the immense scale of the horror and expresses a firm desire for it never to be forgotten and to never happen again. Instead, here's what Roald Dahl says to the young journalist. There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non Jews. I mean, there's always a reason why anti anything crops up anywhere. And then he goes on to say, even a stinker like Hitler didn't
just pick on them for no reason. Ugh, Okay, this is what we've been waiting for, folks. Here we go in my hard podcast, Imagine Entertainment and Parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is the Secret world of Roald Dahl. Episode seven. Now, if you're worried, we're about to waste a whole lot of time dissecting one unrepresentative quote that didn't really reflect who Doll was or what he believed in. Don't be the quote I just read wasn't a one off comment.
There's extensive evidence of Doll's bigotry. Dall biographer Jeremy Treglone records a bunch of problematic stuff that Dahl said and did throughout his life. At a social club, for instance, Doll's daughter Tessa remembers her father complained about the number of Jews who were members. He got drunk one night and stood up to make a speech. Diners at nearby tables told him to shut up. Doll was thrown out
and his club membership was revoked, says Treglone. Dall's editor, the legendary Robert Gottlieb, who worked with so many brilliant writers, from Nora Ephron to Tony Morrison to Robert Carrow. He believes that dolls prejudice against Jews grew worse after he and Dahl had a falling out. Now a little context. Career wise, Doll was on top, having already published most of his iconic children's books. But in his personal life, Dall was a bit of a mess. He had divorced
Patricia Neil after thirty years of marriage. He was in constant physical pain from back surgery stemming from that crash in the desert decades earlier. And while he's having all this career success, he's very insecure about people thinking he can only write for kids. So when he's offered the chance to review a book about Israel in a literary journal, he sees it as a rare opportunity to write for adults,
and he's going to make the most of it. As I mentioned, the review comes out in nineteen eighty three. It's not excusing Dall to say that certain prejudices were more common in mainstream culture back then. Just look at
our movies of the era. Some of the biggest films of nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty four were Sixteen Candles, the John Hughes classic featuring Long Duck Dung, The Chinese Exchange, student Trading Places, The Edding If You Break Out, which includes blackface along with a bunch of class based stereotypes, Indiana Jones, and The Temple of Doom, where Indian characters are depicted as either noble mystics or bloodthirsty savages. And on TV three's Company is The Big Show, which is
basically one long gay panic joke. Now a confession, I still love some of those movies, and that's part of why this is so complicated. I can still laugh at a lot of the jokes in trading places and just ignore the offensive ones. But I know I'm in a privileged position to be able to do that, and of course not everybody wants to do that. So back to that book review, it's just as problematic as the interview he gives about it. It's for the journal Literary Review.
The book tells the story of the recent Israeli siege of Baybery, but in his review, Dog goes beyond the contents of the book. He takes the opportunity to write a passionate denunciation of the entire Israeli Palestinian conflict, which he brought ends into an attack on Israel and Jewish people everywhere. And yes, this has a of contemporary relevance. The same stuff is happening all over again today. Here's the beginning of Dolls book review.
In June nineteen forty one, I happened to be in of all places, Palestine, flying with the Arif against the Bishi, French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany, and the gas chambers were being built, and the mass slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts bled for the Jewish men, women and children, and we hated the Germans.
Okay, so far dolls throwing in some of his own biography to relate to the contents of the buck, and then he continues.
Exactly forty one years later, in June nineteen eighty two, the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used to be Palestine into Lebanon, and the mass slaughter of the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and Palestinian men, women and children, and we all started hating the Israelis.
Okay, so he's connecting what he saw as a pilot in the war with what he sees now, but then ramps up to this referring to the Jewish people.
Never before in the history of Man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitted victims to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world, and then, in the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion. It is as though a group of much loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children.
He continues, It is.
Like the good old Hitler and Himler times all over again.
Wow, there's a lot there, like calling a whole race of people, namely the Jews, barbarous murderers because he opposes the actions of a handful of people in the Israeli government. Honestly, I'm just not enough of an expert in these issues to do this conversation justice, So I want to bring in someone who is Yeah, you're Rosenberg has dedicated his professional life to study and thinking about this stuff in a really brilliant way. Yayir is a writer for The Atlantic.
He's also written for The Washington Posts, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, you name it. He speaks around the world on the topic of anti Semitism and I love this. He's credited with coining the sarcastic Internet term Gerbel's gap, which is the amount of time between a negative event transpiring in the world and someone finding a way to blame it on the Jews. I'm going to ask Gayer to help provide context for various things Dall said.
First up, I asked Gayer why blaming all Jews for the actions of the Israeli leadership is thought to be antisemitic.
Yeah, so there's a general human tendency here and a
particular anti Jewish one. Generally speaking, a lot of prejudice takes the form of people looking at a minority group and saying, anybody in this minority community that does anything or says anything reflects on the entire group and every person in it, such that if you're a member of minority, you're collectively culpable for what anyone else and that minority may say or do anywhere, no matter where they are, and no matter your connection or lack there off to
those people. And that's not unique to Jews, right, that's textbook racism, textbook bigotry. Think the spike in anti Muslim hate crimes after nine to eleven, which was people taking out anger at a specific group of fundamentalist terrorists on everyday Americans who happened to have some identifying characteristic that they associated with them. And so that is the general human tendency towards prejudice. That's an old, old thing that
many of us have experienced or seen. And then there's this specifically Jewish version of it where you see people saying that, yeah, old Jews are to blame for anything else any other Jew did in my perception, but you have to think of Rode Doll in this particular context.
He was raised on a continent that for centuries persecuted, abused, expelled, and murdered Jews over allegations of what other Jews thousands of miles away did in the Middle East, namely they allegedly killed Jesus, and that was seen to justify centuries of anti Semitism on the European continent. Roade Doll grows up in that place, right, that sort of way of thinking about Jews, and you know, is part of what pays the way for the Holocaust and the ideas of
the Nazis spread. It's not particularly new. It does get secularized later on, where the Jews in Europe and the United States and elsewhere get attacked over whatever Jews thousands of miles away in the Middle East may have done, and that somebody is angry about. It's not exactly different, it's just the name's changed. And so in that way, Dallas reflecting a general human tendency towards prejudice, and he's also reflecting a very age old story that people tell
about Jews. And I think actually he's not particularly unique in this respect. As you can see, this is a very common way of thinking about minorities as mendacious monoliths. What is unique is us asking the question and saying, maybe we shouldn't do that. We're the exception. He's actually the rule.
Interesting, and I mean we see this a lot today. Obviously, what's going on in Israel and Gaza right now is you know, on the front page every day, and people are doing it again. People are blaming Jews in America, Jews all over the world with what the Israeli government is doing right now to the Palestinians.
Yeah, it's a very similar dynamic. If Rodal was alive today, he would be doing the same thing. He'd be blurring these lines between actions committed by an Israeli government and a specific place in time for specific people with all Jews around the world, rather than treating everybody as individuals and judging them based on those characteristics. It's disheartening and obviously it's wrong, but it's just something that's always been
with us as human beings. It's a sort of a shortcut we use for thinking about minority groups that we don't know well. Rather than trying to get to know them and to understand them in their complexity and diversity, we often try to reduce them to stereotypes, and in some cases that means negative stereotypes or the worst thing that anyone has ever said or done in that group. There is a parallel to this, because it's a very
old thing. Ever since Israel has existed, there have been people who have been angry about this or that Israeli policies that have taken that out on proximate Jews. And before Israel existed, whatever Jews in the Middle East did was also taken out on any nearby approximate Jews, no matter what connection they had to what happened in that place.
Dahl also makes reference to quote those powerful American Jewish bankers, any asserts that the United States government is quote a literally dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there. Can you talk a little bit about those anti Semitic trips.
Sure.
There are two kinds of anti semitism, generally speaking. One is the personal prejudice. This is the kind of bigotry that most of us are familiar with, which is, I don't like that person because they're different, they're too Jewish, they're too Muslim, they're too black. And that's a social prejudice and it's very harmful to the people targeted by it.
There's also a different kind of antisemitism that's the conspiratorial expression of anti semitism, and this one posits that Jews are a sinister string pulling cabal that is behind all the world's social and economic problems. It's a theory about how the entire world works, and it all traces back to Jews. And if you see something going wrong, there's definitely a Jew behind it, right, you perceive that there's an invisible hand, it belongs to an invisible Jew, and
so Rodal here is expressing that he did it. That my understanding is in other contexts as well, not just saying Jews controlled the banks, not just saying they controlled the government. He also said they controlled the media. You know, Jews are zero point two percent of the human population, right, if you were to think about this logically, even if they punched one hundred percent above their weight, they would zero point four percent of the power. It's just not
how the world actually works in reality. Of course, Jews have been persecuted and exterminated for much of their existence because they're a tiny group that doesn't really have this kind of power influence. And Jews themselves are extremely diverse and fractious and disagree with each other, and there are many different sects and different beliefs, and they'll argue with each other. And anyone who's ever spent time in a Jewish community or with Jews are around shabatar passover a
table knows right that Jews can't set the therm? Is that let alone? How do you know, I don't know, control Western civilization. But again, this is sort of a very long standing stereotypical way of thinking about Jews, and you know, Dollas reflecting it. In the case of Jewish bankers and others controlling the government, you might wonder, how did two out of every three European Jews get killed
on the Holocaust. If this incredible Jewish conspiracy was there running the show, it seems extremely bad at its job. And similarly speaking, there's so many when the state of Israel was found that in nineteen forty eight, America put it under an arms embargo is very strange thing to do if the Jews control of the government. There's a
lot of examples of this in history. Lots of Jewish activists did lobby Franklin Dollan or Roosevelt to try to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz, the death camp where some many Jews were being killed, and he didn't do it. Lots of Jewish activists tried to get the United States and other countries to lift their immigrant quotas to allow more Jewish refugees to flee the Holocaust. They didn't do it. There are so many examples of this, it's kind of perverse.
The anti Semitic world view is kind of an inversion of the reality. It posits that this tiny group of Jews determines the fate of all the non Jews were in fact, logically speaking right, the large non Jewish majority of the world desides what the world is going to be like for a lot of different minorities, not just Jews.
Here's another one, and this is when I'm certainly less familiar with than the other troops. Talking about Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Dahl said, quote, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me. But they, meaning the Jews, were always submissive. What is that about?
So this is more complicated than simply some of antisemitic idea. It's actually a critique that many people have leveled against Jewish victims of the Hana Claust, which is a hard thing to do, to critique victims of the Holocaust, but it's been done. And some of those people who leveled
that critique, ironically, were people that Dahl hated. Scientists, some Zionists said that the problem of the Jews of Europe is that they didn't defend themselves and that they weren't strong enough, and so that they need a state and an army so things like this can never happen again.
And the irony is that road Dall was criticizing these Jewish victims of the Holo claust in the same way as some of the founders of the State of Israel criticized their Jewish warbears, and yet he doesn't support anything that Israel does militarily. And Dahl says that Jews were too weak and pathetic and they went like lambs to
their slaughter and they didn't fight back. But then when Jews go along and say, you know what, we're going to found a state and have an army, and then we're going to fight back when we perceive ourselves to be threatened, well then he says they're incredibly evil, bloodthirsty and militaristic heads world. Dall wins tails the Jews lose. And this is a very common way that bigots relate
to the minorities they don't like. Basically, there's nothing they can do that is right, and they're attacked for absolutely contradictory things. No matter what they do and no matter how they change, they're always subject to the same prejudice, because where prejudice comes from prejudging, you've already prejudged the community, and then you come up and backfill the justifications afterwards.
To go back to this specific instance, for just a Yeacond, just because it's really something I don't know about. There's an idea among people that the Jews during the Holocaust should have wrestled their Nazi guards to the ground. More, they should have gotten together and wrestled them. What is it?
Yeah, no, so I think so exactly So this is good because you give me a chance to say something I should have said. The outset, which is, I think it's an unfair critique, whether leveled by Zionists or level by Rod Doll, the anti Zionist. I think the idea that the Jews could have somehow overturned or bought back in any really effective capacity against this Nazi empire is not a reasonable critique. That being said, the other thing
to note is that plenty of Jews did. The critique is wrong because plenty of Jews did attempt to file back. The reason we know it wouldn't work is because they failed or they weren't successful in saving so many of the Jews. You have the War Sot Ghetto Uprising, perhaps the most famous example of resistance to the Nazis, but
it did ultimately fail. You similarly had plenty of Jews who joined the various resistance movements in different European countries against the Nazis and helped fight back and also helped spirit Jews and others away to safety. All of these things actually did happen, and they did make a difference, but they weren't the same thing as defeating the Nazis. It wasn't something that the Jews, in their tiny numerical rounding era in the human population ever could have possibly done.
So it's good that you circled back because I do think you actually kind of at the foreground by saying I think personally right, the critique is wrong, it's historically wrong, and it's morally inadequate. At the same time, it is very revealing about Doll that he can make this critique and that at the same time attack Jews for being, you know, so pathetic and so inept and so weak, and then when they act strong and they're militaristic, then
they're evil for being bloodthirsty and villainous. Did he ever spell out what he actually thinks Jews were allowed to do and what they should be or you know, is it no matter what they do, they can ever please Rodal.
That was Iier Rosenberg, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the newsletter Deep Stuttle. I also want to mention that while Dahl died without apologizing for his antisemitic comments, years after his death, the Doll family did issue a formal apology. It was around the same time that Netflix purchased his whole catalog. Here's the statement in its entirety, which you can also see at rolldall dot com slash apology.
The Doll Family and the Roll Doll Story Company deeply apologized for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roll Dall's antisemitic statements. Those prejudice remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in mark contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Rolldahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, role Dahal can help remind us of the lasting impact
of words. So what are we supposed to do about this? Do we accept that apology from his family? Do we chalk it all up to it being a different area, or do we stop reading Doll, stop giving his books to our children. One thing that makes it especially complicated for me is that Doll's personal prejudices didn't really make it into his books as far as I can tell. Some critics say they see antisemitic tropes in The Wishes.
It's possible, but I don't know if I agree. And if we can't definitively locate those problematic views in his writing and he's no longer profiting off the sales of his books, does it still make sense to stop reading them. I'm fascinated by this question. I'm someone who constantly does the mental gymnastics that's required of all of us when we consume art from previous generations. I'll just say it, all right, some of my favorite writers and favorite filmmakers
have done awful things. I don't want to have them over for dinner. But I still read the novels, still worship the movies. And of course it's not always even previous generations. The writer Alice Monroe, who died not long ago, was revealed to have stayed with her second husband after learning that he'd sexually abused her daughter With Roald Dahl, I think the issue was even more complicated by the
fact that we encourage our kids to consume him. I would never allow a babysitter with clear, open prejudices to be around my kids in real life. Why should authors and filmmakers be any different. Maybe because we think we have more control over how they're presented to the kids, Like we can offer a warning and we know it's in there and what's not in there. We know nothing crazy is going to be said off the cuff, the way it might be if a bigoted old grandmother or
somebody was left alone with them. Also, forcibly taking away books and movies feels like a slippery slope. It feels a little bit like censorship, and I hate the idea of that. I firmly believe that experiencing art is essential to being human, and that art has the capacity to do great things, even if it's created by crappy people. And I'm absolutely including children's books in that definition of art. All kinds of art can affect positive change, often even
more than protest movements or marches or elections can. Just look at how Americans started becoming more tolerant of gay families thanks to a silly Network sitcom, Will and Grace for your information, Will Walter was the love of my life. You said that about each Backstreet Boy at one time
or another. I also totally buy the argument that America was only able to finally elect a black president because they saw a prosperous, lovable, familiar black family on TV every week in the nineteen eighties, namely the Cosbys.
It's good great Nessinaraty gave us some fascinating stuff.
Yeah, we can be pretty fascinating at times. We're on away to theasm. Now are you going inside? Yeah?
Well, I would just like to say that the condition of certain rooms in this house do not necessarily reflect the views of management.
Thank you, and yes, the idea that Cosby is responsible for anything good at this point is hard to believe, But of course there are tons of other examples of
popular art creating positive change in the world. I was commissioned by A and E a few years ago to rate a four part limited TV series about how Breakfast at Tiffany's jumpstart the feminist movement an Tiffany's manage that really positive outcome, while also containing one of cinema's most egregious examples of Antiesian stereotyping, namely Mickey Rooney's performance as Holly's upstairs neighbor. The racism in Tiffany Is is so egregious that it feels like you can use it as a
teaching moment if you watch it with your kids. The much scarier thing to me is when the bigotry is more subtle, which brings us back to dull. I can't help thinking about it. Very scary, maybe very pertinent metaphor suggested by Dall himself in maybe his greatest book, In The BFG, he writes that his hero has the ability to influence children's thoughts by delivering specific dreams to them while they sleep. In the story, it's an act of
kindness by a sweet, loving creature. But what if the guy delivering those dreams and influencing children's thoughts wasn't so sweet and wasn't so loving? What then, to get a better understanding of this really important issue, I want to talk to a few people, people who are really thoughtful about this stuff.
I did read him growing up, and I enjoyed his books.
That's the voice of a great rock Sane Gay. She's a best selling writer and critic. She's written novels, short stories, and even a Marvel comic. Your smartest, most engaged friend, has definitely forwarded you one of her essays at some point. I'm very excited to talk to Roxane about all of this.
She has really strong, clear feelings on the subject. What I want to talk to you about is, you know, Dahl also said some very antisemitic things, and I struggle with whether or not I can read his work, and sort of even more importantly for me, I guess can I give his books to my little kids to read? Which leads to kind of a larger question about whether we can ever separate an artist's private beliefs from their
public art. So I think you've written really wisely about this topic, and I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about your own experiences grappling with that question.
Yes, I mean, it's a question I think about quite a lot, and certainly as a feminist, it's a question I've asked about a lot, and I, for one, don't believe you can separate the art from the artist, nor do I think you should. I think that we are who we are and that influences the art that we put into the world in some way.
Now, Roald Dahl.
Wrote some amazing books like James and the Giant Peach Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. He's a consummate storyteller, and certainly generations of children have fallen in love with his work. So the legacy is there, But there's also the legacy of virulent anti Semitism. And the reality is that there are plenty of children's authors out there who have written
very good books who also are not anti Semites. And so when people sort of wring their hands about this, I get a little frustrated because this is not the only game in town, And what really people want is like a morality hall pass, because oh, he's a genius, like so are a lots of other people, and so like, read what you want, truly enjoy what you want, but accept responsibility for the fact that you are willing to overlook some truly bad behavior for your enjoyment or for
someone else's enjoyment.
That makes a lot of sense. When Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation was going to be released in twenty sixteen, you wrote a really great piece of The New York Times about just what we're talking about, not being able to separate past accusations against Parker for sexual assault from his movie. Reading the piece, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but it felt a little bit like one of the things that troubled you most about that situation was how he handled it. He sort of made the
apology all about himself. With Roald Dahl, it's tricky, right because he's not around to defend himself anymore or apologize for that matter. And I'm not saying he would apologize. In fact, he probably wouldn't. But who knows does that play in for you in terms of long dead artists, Like do you have trouble reading a ground Poe knowing that he married his thirteen year old cousin, or Ts
Eliott or Norman Mahler or more recently Alice. What does it do for you when it's sort of someone who is not around to defend themselves or not defend themselves.
I mean, that doesn't even factor for me. I think that it would be great if these people could apologize, but I doubt that most of them would be apologetic, because most of them would not think that they had done anything wrong, or they would be like, yeah, I said it, and I believe it, and so what It just doesn't even factor. And I have no problem not reading these people. I just don't because there's so much
amazing literature out there. And I know, for example, a lot of people feel a true sense of loss over Alice Munroe. But every time I think about, oh, you know, her incredible short stories, I have far more empathy for her daughter, who she was willing to sacrifice because of her own weakness. I'm a human being. I can understand sort of that she you know, why she made that choice of choosing her husband despite the harm that he was doing to her child. But it's not okay, And
I'm not speaking for anyone else. I'm only making these decisions for me. And you know, a lot of times people really overestimate the power of writers in terms of like, oh, what do you mean, I can't enjoy this thing? I want to enjoy, Like do what you want. But what you want is for me to say it's fine, And I can't say that because I don't think it is. But I also, who cares what I think? What do
you think? So I don't struggle with these things in that I just tend to value the dignity and the lives of these people's victims far more than the people who have made such egregious mistakes themselves, and the counter argument often is that we're all human and we all make mistakes, and that is absolutely true. We are all flawed, and I include myself in that. But I also know that I'm never going to be an anti semi. I'm never going to be transphobic. I know who I am.
There are some mistakes most of us don't make. I'm never going to commit sexual violence. So I think that we have to also remember that these are things are a matter of scale, and that we can't compare our normal human foibles and flaws with people who are criminals and bigots.
I think that makes a ton of sense. When I buy a Mel Gibson movie, or rent a Roman Planski movie, or buy a Kanye West song, I feel like I'm giving them money, right, And that bothers me. It sounds like for you, it's not as much about whether or not we're sort of enriching them or helping them. It's more just you have trouble enjoying it, right, Is that right?
I have trouble looking past, you know, Like, for example, I used to really enjoy Kanye West's music before we found out who Kanye really is. I just can't enjoy it anymore, because every time I start to be like, oh, yes, listen to that beat drop because he is brilliant, and I acknowledge that he's also truly a horrible person. So I just can't. And that's just the way I'm made up. I don't even think about the enrichment thing. I think
people really overvalue their dollars. Like Kanye Rich is already wealthy by his music. Down't buy his music. It's not really changing his bottom line. I mean, I don't think we should consume his music. I don't think we should enrich him or fatten his coffers. But I do think that for me, it's just something I can't do, and I don't not even can't. I of course I could, I don't want to. I can no longer enjoy The
Cosby Show. And I loved that show. I loved it because we weren't really allowed to watch TV growing up, and that was one of two things we were allowed to watch, was that in Little House on the Prairie. You know, it's sad and I definitely lament, you know the loss.
Do you think a writer's personal views always, or their prejudices or their outlooks or their viewpoints always find a way into the work, and if they don't, does that change the calculus at all.
I don't think that a writer's views always infuse themselves into the work. I do think that there are some writers and other artists who are very capable of hiding their true selves. But it's rare. It's rare. I do actually think that's what makes Rodall such a tough one. For the most part, you really would not know his beliefs if you didn't know about them, if you didn't go and look up information about the artists. Certainly, it's not something I ever knew about until recently, like in
the past decade. It's challenging, and I think that what a lot of people need to believe is that genius and genius art matters more than the crimes of the genius artists and the toxic beliefs of the genius artist. We hear that quite a lot with Woody Allen, with Roman Polanski, especially with like the whole slew of anti Semites, and I firmly understand that for some people that is just the case, and it is, you know, I just disagree.
I think that you can't separate it Now when people just say, like, yes, he's an anti semi and he made amazing work, that's more honest that you acknowledge it and you're going to consume the work regardless because you feel like it offers more than the damage done by whatever the toxicity or the crime is. And I think that more people believe that than not. Unfortunately, but I'm sure you're talking to Claire Debtorer.
Yeah we are, actually, Yeah.
She wrote an amazing book about this that I thought was really really well done, where she grapples with these questions, and when people are at least willing to grapple with the questions, I find that more interesting than actually sitting around worrying about these horrible people, because again, that's more honest that yes, some people are ambivalent about this, or some people really struggle, some people don't know how to sacrifice these works of art for the sake of the
greater good. And you know, I do think it's at least important to have those conversations. And a book like Monsters, which Claire Debtor wrote, was I think our interesting entrance into the dialogue about this.
A huge thanks to Roxanne, and I totally agree with what she said at the end there about who to speak to next? First thing, if you wouldn't mind introduce yourself.
I'm Claire Leader. I'm the author of Monsters of Fans Dilemma.
Here my conversation with Claire in our next episode. She feels really differently than Roxanne about all this. We'll also get into the nitty gritty of an explosive controversy regarding Doll's work thirty two years after his death that seemed to get the entire world talking about him again. The Secret World of Roald Dahn is produced by Imagine Audio
and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me Aaron tracyduced by Matt Schrader, post production by wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seaton, Music by a PM. Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Henry Phillips and Eleven Laps. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review The Secret World of Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or Wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright twenty twenty six. Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax