Contender, or bum?

Thanks to feast4thought for mentioning this little venture in her latest post, although the fact that she refers to me as a "gentleman" makes me think that she should back away from the Indiana wine soon. She also recommends an interesting article from the New York Times Magazine on the life and death of Budd Schulberg, screenwriter of On the Waterfront and McCarthy era informant. Schulberg died earlier the same day as John Hughes (as the summer of celebrity deaths rolls on), so he was unduly tossed aside. The Times piece, however, makes sure that we don't forget about Schulberg, who turned an act of questionable (at best) morality into great art. Can we separate our feelings about the personal lives of artists from the work they produce (or vice versa)? Should we? Just a couple of comments here:

1) I have long despised Schulberg and Waterfront director Elia Kazan for their testimony, which abetted the destruction of hundreds of careers and lives. Yet On the Waterfront is one of the greatest films Hollywood has ever produced, and for me to deny that would be an act of profound intellectual dishonesty. That tension is part of what makes viewing the movie, which I do at least once a year for various classes, so interesting: How do Schulberg and Kazan take the shit of what they did and produce something so magnificent from it? (Fertilizer and flowers, I suppose.) And how do I/the students try to reconcile the acting visible on screen and the shadow behind it? 

2) I also suspect that the more distance there is between artist and audience, the easier it is to countenance both sides of the question. There are two living American writers whose names I won't use here (as one of them might sue me anyway) who are beloved by many of my colleagues. Beloved, in fact, is too mild a term: Mentioning their names in certain quarters here leads to breathlessness and starry-eyed sighs last experienced when the Brady bunch met Davy Jones. Yet I know, from far too many people in far too many circumstances, that both writers are selfish, cruel, and vindictive beyond all reason. I can't help but view anything they produce with little more than disdain. I also know, however, that William Carlos Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald, two of My Favorite Modernists (great sitcom idea there, btw), were equally brutal human beings. But I didn't have friends who had been abused by them, so it's easier for me to let their art speak for them, just as it's easier for me to forgive Budd Schulberg...although I will never forget why I have to forgive.