Thoughts on Kingsolver's The Lacuna and how we judge art and artists...
I f inished reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna (2009). It is a truly remarkable tale, one that focuses on the complicated relationship we have here in the US with artists (all creatives, really) who are political, and with political artists. And yes, there is a distinction to be made there. She tells the story of a young man, Harrison Shepherd, born of an American father and a Mexican mother, and his complex relationship with people, artists in particular, and with his own inner struggles. He becomes a writer who is then excoriated by the government during the 1950s "Red Scare," all because he had worked for noted Mexican artists (Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo) and other communist revolutionaries (notably, Trotsky) as a young man living in Mexico. The press is easily led, people begin to shun him (even his closest male friend and his neighbors), and he becomes a ghost of himself. Even his publisher, who had made a lot of money off his work, canceled their relationshi...
