On Writing: Good Art from Bad Thoughts

Rod Liddle, the British columnist, died earlier this week at 66.

Liddle, I said in a note on Instagram, was nothing short of one of my favorite living writers in the English language. He was also, in any language, quite a nasty piece of work.

He was full of extreme, unkind, and often reprehensible views, a virtual catalog of the unwoke long before woke and more bilious after woke. He stated them all, however, with great love and care for any sentence they graced. Indeed, a stunning proportion of his sentences were small works of art—albeit, to many, despicable work.

My brief acknowledgment of his death was met by quite an astounding condemnation of Liddle, and of me for my praise of him. I invite you to toggle over to Instagram to see the voluminous outpouring of offense that Rod Liddle provoked. (And then to his archive at the Spectator magazine, because, chances are, even if you have expressed your fury, you haven’t actually read Rod Liddle, and have only taken long-distance offense at his various punchlines.)

This all prompts a pretty basic and necessary question: how can a real shit, with all sorts of certainly impolite, and often socially unacceptable views, many threatening to most things in the liberal canon, also be a good writer?