Dostoyevsky was a virulent anti-Semite. He’s my favorite writer. Celine was literally a fascist. Philip Roth counted him as one of his main influences. Do what’s right for you. But please allow your friends to read books, not their authors’ anachronistic views from their eras.

& to be clear: I’m not saying what anyone else should do. If one of my students is uncomfortable w these aspects of a book I ALWAYS tell her it’s her prerogative to choose to read something else.

But if you’re telling ME or others what they can and can’t read? NOPE.

Read the books you love.

(Unless you love Mein Kampf. In that case, please block/unfollow me right now).

The most exciting thing about all of this: BOOKS ARENT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. They’re not a place to have the bromides & pieties you carry into them confirmed. More often than not they’re a battleground of heart & soul & ideas & I LOVE THEM FOR IT.

On last thing on Dostoyevsky: where Chekhov was the son of freed serfs, it’s an accepted fact of Dostoyevsky biography that his father was killed by an uprising of his own serfs. One could surely argue that some of his complicated, often violent worldview was informed by it.

One thing I think about often: what are our moral oversights now? When our kids read our books, what will mortify them? Imagine them disowning a book- is- because, say: someone takes a long shower. A character serves others steak for dinner. A family uses coal-based fuel. 1

Maybe it would help not to overdo our shortsightedness, our arrogance if we’re honest, in disavowing books for a writer’s moral failings, to simply ask: what are our own moral shortcomings?

& just to argue w myself for a sec: those are things I think about all the time as a PERSON. I’m not certain how much they’re the concerns of a novelist qua novel writing. As Chekhov said: my job is to represent as accurately as possible the people I see, how they talk, etc