Our stupid times: Woody Allen memoir fiasco is a defeat for free speech

Censorship by the State is bad. Censorship by businesses to appease those who claim to be outraged is understandable but still deplorable. It may seem prudent; it is also cowardly.

Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of the international publishing house Hachette, accepted Woody Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing”, and the book was due to appear next month. Publication has now been cancelled, partly because Allen’s son, Ronan Farrow, objected to the book’s appearance.

“I was disappointed” he says, “to learn through Press reports that my publisher, Hachette, acquired Woody Allen’s memoir after other major publishers had refused to do so and concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on “Catch and Kill” – a book about how powerful men including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse.”

He added that he could no longer work with Hachette, though I suppose he will still accept payment of the royalties from his own Pulitzer Prize – winning book about the crimes and misdemeanours of Harvey Weinstein, which was published by another of the Hachette imprints – Little, Brown.

One might note that Hachette is a very large multi-national company and that its many imprints enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy.  There is no reason why Grand Central Publishing should have felt obliged to inform, let alone consult, Farrow about its intention to publish his father’s memoir.

However, some members of the Hachette staff have also objected to the publication of Allen’s book, and this seems to have been decisive in persuading Grand Central Publishing to tear up its contract with Allen and pulp his book. One assumes he is now entitled to sue for breach of contract.

Now I hold no brief for Allen. Likewise, I have no idea whether he is guilty of the alleged crime of sexually abusing his daughter Dylan when she was a child. The allegations have, I understand, been the subject of two police investigations, and no charges have been brought. Nor of course do I know whether Allen deals with the matter in this memoir, and I guess Ronan Farrow hasn’t had the opportunity to read the book himself.

In truth this is irrelevant. The issue isn’t Allen’s guilt or innocence. It’s not whether he is a nasty abuser or himself a victim of calumny. It’s not about the Allen-Farrow family quarrel. The issue is free speech, and there are two immediate questions.

First, what right has Ronan Farrow to use his influence and his current celebrity to block publication of his father’s book? Second, is he asserting that only those whom he deems to be morally pure good guys should be allowed to have their books published?  If so, we’re in for a lot of book-burning.

We live, as my old friend the playwright Simon Gray used to say, in exceptionally stupid times, and one of the characteristic features of this stupidity is the insistence that people are all of a piece, entirely admirable or wholly reprehensible. Very few are, whether classed as saints or villains.

Woody Allen may have been guilty of despicable and possibly criminal acts. We don’t know, but, for the moment, let us assume that he was. Does this mean that whatever virtuous and meritorious qualities he may have are of no account and should therefore be ignored? Is nothing to be put on the other side of the balance. Does this mean that his work should be set aside, that we shouldn’t watch the films he has made or read what he has written?

The proposition is absurd. Dickens behaved abominably to his wife. Tolstoy forced himself on peasant girls who were his serfs, Byron (probably) had an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Wilde consorted with rent boys, Colette in middle-age seduced her seventeen year-old stepson, Leonardo da Vinci was – probably again – a pederast.

So what? Are we not to delight in Dickens’ novels, Tolstoy’s novels, Colette’s novels, Bryon’s poetry, Wilde’s plays, Leonardo’s paintings? Come off it.

Ronan Farrow has been rightly applauded for his exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s criminality. Few in the present fevered atmosphere will be found to say anything good about Weinstein, and perhaps there indeed isn’t much to be said for him. But when, in an article in The Times, deploring the continuing power of “Weinstein’s enablers”, Gerard Baker writes contemptuously of “those other fawning actresses who praised the man’s humanity”, isn’t it possible that they, or some of them, were sincere, and spoke of Weinstein as they had found him? It is possible to be a brute and a bully but also at other times kind, sympathetic and helpful.

Farrow believes his father guilty of child-abuse. He is of course entitled to do so. You may think he is also entitled to use his current celebrity to put pressure on a publishing firm to abandon its intention to publish his father’s memoir, though others may see this as an abuse of power on his part. The power is certainly his for the moment. The publishers have feebly knuckled under. One understands their decision: why invite trouble? Anything for an easy or easier life.

But it’s still censorship on moral grounds. The result is a victory for Ronan Farrow, a victory for self-righteousness, a victory for our stupid times, and a defeat for Free Speech.