How should we react when we learn that someone who has brought us great pleasure — as an author, movie star or producer, comedian, poet, cartoonist — is a terrible person in “real life”? Although the last decade has brought ugly news about a host of well-known personalities, this is hardly a new phenomenon. From the slave-owning “Fathers of the Republic” to renowned 19th century novelists such as Charles Dickens (an awful husband and father) the (sadistic!) Marquis de Sade or hypersexual Victor Hugo to, more recently, misogynist Pablo Picasso or the author of my beloved A House for Mr Biswas, the racist V.S. Naipaul — such towering icons of my education and beyond have been shown to have been desperately flawed human beings.

I’m going to list a few more that come to mind, but you’ll easily be able to come up with your own list while asking, Should we spurn the works of awful people, or take a deep breath and simply enjoy the fruits of their labor?

Harvey Weinstein, movie producer and convicted rapist, currently serving a 39-year prison sentence. With his brother, he was responsible for a host of award-winning movies via Miramax and The Weinstein Company including Chicago, Shakespeare in Love, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook.

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, a fabulous sci-fi novel that won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Card, great-great-grandson of Brigham Young (who isn’t, in Utah?) is an outspoken homophobe.

Carl Orff, composer. Orff’s 1936 cantata Carmina Burina features a rousing chorus that’s become a standard in the modern classical repertoire. Orff was the musical darling of the Nazi party, and Carmina Burina has been described as “…the single universally important work produced during the entire span of the Third Reich.”

Bill Cosby, comedian. AKA Cliff Huxtable, “America’s Dad” was found guilty of multiple charges of aggravated sexual assault. Rolling Stone commented, “…it’s damned near impossible to watch anything the tainted comedian has done and not think of the headlines, the heckling, the revelations and what is, by any definition, monstrous behavior.”

William S. Burroughs, author. Burroughs shot and killed his second wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico City in 1951 in what he described as a drunken “William Tell stunt.” He subsequently became a favorite of the Beat Generation with such novels as The Naked Lunch.

Juliet Hulme, detective writer. Writing under the pseudonym Anne Perry, Hulme authored the Thomas & Charlotte Pitt and William Monk novels. When she was 15, she and her 16-year-old friend murdered the friend’s mother. Kate Winslet portrayed Hulme in the movie about it, Heavenly Creatures.

Then there are anti-Semitic writers and poets galore, including Patricia Highsmith (self-described “Jew hater”), T.S. Eliot (“…any large number of free-thinking Jews [is] undesirable”), Ezra Pound (“The Jew alone can retain his detestable qualities…”), Virginia Wolfe…not to mention Hitler’s favorite composer Richard Wagner.

The list goes on. Any wavering doubts about the flaws of such beloved geniuses as Voltaire, Roald Dahl, Eric Gill, Ayn Rand, Tintin’s Hergé (Georges Remi), Charles Dickens or Lord Byron can be dispelled with a quick trip to Google or Wikipedia.

So that’s my dilemma: Should I judge someone by the worst they did, or the best they did?