I have often thought upon this matter of calling oneself a fan of another man.
For in calling thyself his fan, dost thou not, in some measure, take upon thyself the whole of the man? His work, his private life, his faults, his virtues, and all those things which have naught to do with the very thing for which thou didst admire him in the first place.
There is a strange bargain hidden in the word. Thou mayest begin with nothing more than admiration for a man’s work, yet soon enough thou art defending the man himself. His words must be explained when they are foolish. His actions must be excused when they are shameful. Matters which would have meant nothing to thee had they been done by a stranger suddenly become matters for which thou feelest compelled to make an account.
But who asked this of thee?
To admire a man’s work is not to enter into allegiance with the man. The work may be worthy while the man is not. One may take pleasure in a man’s craft and have no desire whatsoever to imitate his manner of living. One may learn much from his judgment in one matter and find his judgment wanting in another. There is no contradiction in this, unless we insist upon making a whole out of every part.
Perhaps this is what I find more honest in admiration. It allows a man to remain a man.
I need not make him good in all things because I have found him good in one. I need not defend what ought not to be defended. Nor must I cast away what was genuinely valuable merely because I have discovered something in him that is not.
There are men from whom I have taken an idea, a way of thinking, a piece of work. I have followed them for years, perhaps, but only in that narrow place where they have something to give me. Beyond it, I have little claim and little interest. Their private lives belong to them. Their mistakes belong to them. Their victories also belong to them.
They are not characters written for my sake. They have their own lives to attend to, and I have mine.
Yet being a fan asks for something more. It asks, whether openly or not, that the person be taken as a whole. And once we have done this, our judgment begins to change.
We no longer look at the deed by itself. We look first at the man who did it.
If we love the man, the fault becomes smaller. If another man had done the same thing, we might have condemned it without thought. But now we search for circumstances, intentions, explanations. We become lawyers for a person who never appointed us.
And should the fault become too great to defend, there comes another trouble: disappointment.
We say that the man has changed, that he has betrayed what we believed him to be. But perhaps it was not he who changed. Perhaps we had simply mistaken one part of him for the whole.
This seems to me the greater danger of making idols out of ordinary men. We ask them to remain consistent with an image which existed chiefly in our own minds.
I would rather leave men where they are.
Let the good work remain good. Let the foolish word be called foolish. Let the worthy man receive his admiration, and the unworthy act receive its judgment. Neither need be sacrificed for the sake of the other.
I can admire a man without becoming his defender.
Perhaps that is the better distance between admiration and devotion.