Mark West

A profile in Vulture of Jay Leno called the comedian's garage the chocolate factory, and he's Willy Wonka.

Literally just this morning, I opened an email newsletter that I subscribed to on the science of happiness that referenced a golden ticket to well-being.

I defy you to find anywhere near the same number of references to any other writer, with the possible, possible exception of Shakespeare.

Here's what I think Dahl's enduring presence in culture really means.

The stories we tell our kids are so powerful, so foundational to who we become, that we'll keep them alive no matter what we learn about their creator.

Dahl's creations aren't everywhere despite his flaws.

They're everywhere because we've decided his flaws don't matter enough to let his stories die.

This isn't nostalgia.

It's an active, collective moral decision.

We're saying some art transcends its creator so completely that it belongs more to us than to them.

Dahl's stories have become part of the architecture of childhood itself.

Claire Dederer, who we heard from earlier in the season, wrote an essay quoting the writer Martha Gellhorn's views on how some great mid-century artists were horrible human beings.

Gellhorn wrote from experience, being married to Ernest Hemingway.

She was also pals with Dahl and may have been thinking about both men when she said she didn't think an artist needed to be a monster, she thought a monster needed to make himself into an artist.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, but I do wonder if Gellhorn was maybe asking the wrong question here.

Maybe the real question isn't whether or not Dahl's genius excuses his cruelty, but how his cruelty informed his genius.

Who else could write so convincingly about the casual evil of adults except someone who understood that darkness intimately?

Quoting a favorite European poet, Dahl once said, When I'm dead, I hope it said my skins were scarlet, but my books were red.

He definitely achieved that.

Dahl was such a legendary, almost mythic figure by the end of his life, that his death was pretty shocking to people.