If someone presents themselves as a moral authority, as Brooks does, then their actions in private life are relevant.

Divorcing and remarrying is unmoral? If anything, this sounds like values from the victorian era.

Divorce is in general fine, but leaving your wife for your research assistant who is half your age feels pretty sleazy.

Give your life to someone for 25 years (think about what that means and what one gives up for that other person) and then see what you think of that other person if they simply leave you for an upgrade. This is not controversial. It is, however, controversial to consider marriage something either party is free to slip in and out of. I’d like to know which commenters here are married; it’s actually impractical to think of marriage as a non-commitment.

You sound a lot like the catholic church here. It could have been 25 pretty nice years, and in the last 5 both people found that they had grown apart over time and mutually decided they might look for something else (maybe after the kids are out of the house, etc if they have kids). I have no idea if thats the case here. Blanket statements on the morality of human relationships are rather foolish.

Nope, I don’t sound anything like the Catholic Church. If both people agree, of course there’s no problem at all.

It only works that way up to a point. That point is when the private stuff is either illegal or is directly relevant to the work, as in this case. #metoo anyone?

Please elaborate how his divorce is either illegal or directly relevant to his writing

Character is a theme (and title!) of many of his writings. Ending an avowed life-time commitment in the circumstances around the way he did it brings that into question. We should all be questioning it, even if we're free to come to different conclusions.

> an avowed life-time commitment

That's everything what modern marriage today isn't. That's basically a religious view of marriage, which can freely exist, but has no legal binding at all, and whether divorce is ethical or not for one or some religions/"philosophies" is not necessarily universal.

If that were the case, no one would bother with marriage. It would be completely meaningless. This is an incredibly naive view.

The relevant question is not whether it's legal nor what one's religion has to say on the matter. The question is whether he showed character, and we can evaluate that by whether he lived up to his word and--especially--by how his wife took it.

Sorry but BS. Marriage is an economical (oiko- in oikonomia---the Greek word that is the etymological origin of economy---means family/home), legal and religious phenomenon. In modern societies the accent is on the first two, and we separate the legal meaning of it from its religious one; the former being an official bond regarding two person and their children, which governs how responsibilities, goods and resources belonging to a family core are parted and used among those individuals. That's the big part of why people bother with marriage (or things like civil unions) even if they are not religious.

Regardless, "living up to one's words" means nothing regarding the validity of a statement. I can say 1 + 1 = 1, but then in my private life behave as if it was 2; that does not affect the truth of the former statement.

So marrying someone younger than you is now equivalent to rape?

You're being disingenuous to claim I inferred that.

How? You referenced #metoo, which is a movement in which people that have sufferent sexual attacks in various forms "come out" publicly. I can easily see how the gp comment interpreted that that way.

The context of that conversation is about whether one's private life should affect how we take one's work. #metoo is an excellent reference in that case.

They may have read it uncharitably (saying you're equating rape to age gap) but talking about the age gap between his current spouse and then metoo in the next breath conjures up the idea that that's what you mean.

It's not like some people find age gaps in sexual and romantic relations uncouth, so it's not hard to make the jump as that's what you meant.

> The context of that conversation is about whether one's private life should affect how we take one's work. #metoo is an excellent reference in that case.

No, it's not; sexual assault and harassment are part of working life and/or public offenses, not “private life”.

Sexual assault and harassment can also happen in a marriage, as it is a question of whether some person acts according to the consent or refusal of other(s). Still, divorce and a second marriage is neither sexual assault nor sexual harassment; and age difference among partners alone---as long as all the parties' ages are within legal consensual limits---is not a proof of sexual agression or illegality of the relation, so, nothing to do with #metoo here, regardless of it being priavate or public.

Edit: Not contesting you, btw; just correcting a misinformation.