Spot the Difference

[steepholm]

William Mayne, noted children's author, jailed for two and half years in 2004 for child sex offences that took place some thirty years earlier. On the sex offenders register for life. An unpublishable pariah.

Roman Polanski, noted film director, still unpunished some thirty years after admitting the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. Feted, given lifetime achievement awards by the European film establishment (ETA to say nothing of the Oscar!), and continues to make movies that receive critical acclaim - including some that involve working closely with children, such as Oliver Twist (2005).

Shurely some mistake?

Comments

[sheenaghpugh]

I'm quite baffled at the protests from France (though not, quite, by the sympathy for Polanski, at least in that age-group that recalls the murder of his wife, not that that has owt to do with anything but it's hard to feel he hasn't suffered...) But the man is a bail-jumper; the Swiss had every right to arrest him.

As for Mayne, IIRC his publisher hung fire at first on whether to drop him, and if they thought he'd still sell I suspect they would keep him. Ie, I think he's unpublishable because he's unsellable, not directly because he's a paedophile. He can't go into school or do children's events for one thing, which must make him hard to market. I've no great sympathy for him, either, and again the time-lapse doesn't really signify, any more than it did with Eichmann. Certainly he should be on the register for life. It wouldn't stop me buying his books and giving them to children if I ever had, but I must confess he totally passed me by as a child and parent, the first I heard of his name was the court case.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the inside story on William Mayne's relations with his publisher, but he was far from being an obscure writer. He was a cult figure in the '60s, and although his career had been in the doldrums for a while it had recently revived with Candlefasts and Cradlefasts, the sequels to his classic Earthfasts. Needless to say, all three are now out of print, along with (as far as I can see) everything else he ever wrote. If it's a tragedy, however, it's one of his own making.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Shurely some mistake?

Oh, God, I know. It's driving me crazy, perhaps particularly because I keep seeing things on the internet about how Polanski's original trial was a 'witch hunt' ('regardless of whether or not he raped the girl, justice was not served!' one person said), and this comes in a month where (1) the Guardian published a review of a stage adaptation of Lolita which confidently stated that Nabokov's novel is the tragedy of a man destroyed by the sexual machinations of a teenage girl, and (2) that Buckingham University guy keeps insisting that female undergraduates have more power than male academics and are always the initiating partners in any sexual contact between the two.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Nope. Absolutely deliberate asshattery.

[gillo]

I find it disturbing too. The girl was 13. Not acceptable in my book whether it was consensual as he claimed or not, as she did. I don't get the waves of sympathy towards Polanski.

I'm not convinced Mayne would be particularly publishable nowadays anyway, though - his later books lacked something

Earthfasts

, for example, had - and I suspect they would be less likely to appeal to t' young of today...

[(Anonymous)]

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he's been punished for this lapse--
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He'll miss the movers and the shakers.
He'll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He's suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.
Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that's for sure--
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too--
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people's rules.
So Roman's banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that's for sure--
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too--
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people's rules.
So Roman's banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

Calvin Trillin, The Nation. 07,09,09