After V.S. Naipaul said some stupid things about women writers the issue of having a great book written by a terrible person has come up again. Dickens treated his wife terribly, but he wrote Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Hemingway was a drunk who harboured petty grudges and was married four times, but he wrote The Sun Also Rises. TS Eliot was an anti-Semite but he gave us The Wasteland. The list goes on.
The real question is whether it matters to the work. Of course what the indiscretion is and how long it was are two factors - it's hard to imagine any Nazi writers gaining any kind of credibility, but Gertrude Stein is still read, even though she made comments in support of Hitler. It's also interesting that this doesn't come up as much in the movie/TV/music/sports world - we almost expect an actor/athlete/rock star to behave in a certain way.
When Bad People Write Good Books - Salon
A Collection of Good Books by Morally Questionable People - Flavorwire
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