Can Books Cause Harm?

Yanagihara with a small but meaningful misquote

When Hanya Yanagihara was interviewed by Dua Lipa in 2022, Dua Lipa told the author that A Little Life changed her life. Later their conversation turned to the question I posed in my first video: Who can tell whose stories?

Still from Howcast video “How to Use a Book as a Weapon”

No surprise that Yanagihara, a straight woman who writes almost exclusively about gay men, is in the Salman Rushdie camp of pure artistic freedom. She quotes Colson Whitehead’s maxim (“don’t fuck it up”) as the simplest advice to people writing outside their identity.

Yanagihara goes on to make a much bolder pronouncement.

“We [New York Times style magazine, T.] published an interview with the American playwright Tony Kushner, who wrote Angels in America and most recently wrote the screenplay for West Side Story. And he said something that really resonated with me, which was, he said, ‘I refuse to accept this notion that I am causing harm to another community by writing in their voice.’”

“Because one of the things that art can offer us in this day and age is empathic flights into somebody else's life, which I thought was such a beautiful way of putting it, that as artists, one of the things we are obligated to do is to try to imagine somebody else's life and to try to imagine somebody else's experience.”

The second part of this quote is lovely. But the first part really jolted me. Did Tony Kushner really “refuse to accept the notion” that his work could “cause harm”?

No. He did not. Not exactly.

I found the interview she was referring to. It’s conducted by A.O. Scott. Here is the Kushner quote:

“I have a profound disagreement with anyone who says that a person imagining another kind of person, another culture, is an act of violence or supremacism or appropriation. I absolutely believe that one of the great pleasures of art, and one of the great reasons that we have it, is to be able to witness leaps of empathic imagination.”

Tony Kushner in 1993 on a particular set I admire

Now, I’d like to treat Yanagihara with empathy and respect. I acknowledge it’s hard to do podcast interviews. I don’t expect her to be able to quote Kushner verbatim. And perhaps my reading of the difference between these two quotes is overblown, but…

They do seem meaningfully different to me.

Kushner, to my mind, was stating that the nature of writing some cultural “other” was not itself an act of violence or supremacism. That feels different than saying: I refuse to accept that my writing can cause harm to a community. Violence is purposeful harm. But you can have harm without violence.

I can’t help imagining this in the context of a relationship.

The Yanagihara version:

HUSBAND #1: What you said hurt me.

HUSBAND #2: I refuse to acknowledge that it caused harm.

And Kushner’s version, maybe?

HUSBAND #1: What you said hurt me.

HUSBAND #2: It wasn’t an act of violence.

HUSBAND #1: Yeah, but it hurt me.

HUSBAND #2: I understand that you’re hurt.

The backdrop of all of this is, of course, A Little Life, Yanagihara’s breakout second novel which sold more than 2.5 million copies, was an awards favorite, and made all the BookTok kids cry.

Critic Constance Grady, writing in Vox, argues that Yanagihara wrote this story of extreme trauma with a particular point in mind: “to make the case that it is possible for life to become so unpleasant that it should simply end.”

Yanagihara told Electric Literature in 2015 that she wrote her main character as “too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.”

YouTube essayist Owl Criticism categorized A Little Life as “euthanasia fan fiction.” After sharing a touching personal story of depression, he says:

“The message of the book, that some people are better off dead, is beyond irresponsible. It’s dangerous, and above all it’s wrong. Therapy does work. Medication does work. Things can get better. How cold, how sick does Yanagihara have to be to believe that it’s better to let people take their own lives than seek help? Even if you do believe that some people have gone through so much that healing is out of the question, why would you want that idea shared? Especially among young people.”

I find Yanagihara’s misquoting of Tony Kushner particularly bothersome in light of these criticisms.

I want art to be free. I don’t want novels to have to pass some But-Is-The-Message-Good? test. I don’t think novels owe it to us to be socially beneficial or even un-dangerous.

And I’m sympathetic to those like Rushdie who feel authors should have freedom with no constraints at all.

But total artistic freedom is different than denying that your work could hurt someone. You may hope that your novel will help more than it will hurt. Or you may feel that harming someone is a small price to pay for revealing a hidden truth. We regularly engage in activities (like driving cars) that can cause harm to others. We do them because we feel the benefits outweigh the risk of harm.

But to “refuse to accept” that your work can cause harm at all? That doesn’t seem empathetic. It seems convenient.