puzzled, yet intrigued

Leave it to the Guardian to put my lack of literacy into stark relief - this interesting blog post puts forward a good concept - why do we equate the creation of "good" works of art with "good artists?", that the people themselves must also be virtuous? It has certainly not proven to be the case, try as we might to construct heroic mythology around classical composers of all varieties. Mozart was a philanderer, Beethoven had a nasty temper, Bach...well, he may have been saintly or not, hard to tell. At the same time, maybe we like a little bit of grime on our oh-so-shiny producers of cultural products - makes them a bit more human, more real, for all their divine talents.

The sadder part for me was that the post presented a solid handful of authors I didn't know. Off to the library with me.