For the last two decades, I have remembered Arthur Koestler as a generous, hospitable, funny, courteous, and endlessly stimulating friend. I am saddened by the discovery of his violence (both sexual and nonsexual) toward women; he is diminished as a person in my memory. At the same time, I find Darkness at Noon just as impressive a novel as I ever did, and Koestler's views on communism, Zionism, capital punishment, suicide, and the quarantining of dogs as lucid, intelligent, and convincing (or not) as I did before. The Times Literary Supplement, perhaps briefly remembering its Murdoch ownership, ran a front-page strapline of "Does Brilliance Excuse Rape?" I think we can all answer that one, as we can whether or not a rapist can be brilliant. Is there an irony that Koestler loathed and fought totalitarianism, yet in his private life could be overbearing and oppressive—totalitarian if you want to stretch that word? Certainly. Might there be a connection between experiencing the threat of ultimate violence (weeks in Seville prison in 1937 expecting to be shot alongside his colleagues) and the subsequent infliction of violence on others? Possibly. Does this make him a hypocrite whose written testimony we should ignore? Hardly. It's not a case of either/or; it's a case of both/and. Villon was a poet, a thief, and a murderer. Should we dispraise famous men? Where dispraise is due, yes. And the more so since fame can be deceitful and coercive toward those who are impressed by it. We need the valet's view to counteract the spin doctor's. 

In the long run, time forgives; in the short run, people don't. In this respect, Raphael is right. There are those who use the life as the point of entry to the work, rather than the other way around. There are people now who won't read Larkin's poetry because in his private correspondence he said disparaging things about some people who weren't white, male, and English (as well as saying lots of more important things). But time is on Larkin's side, as it was on Villon's. How far it is on Koestler's side is less clear. For those growing up after the collapse of communism, it must be difficult to imagine a time when such a system appeared to have historical inevitability on its side, when the truth of its nature was violently contested, when the psychology of its commissars was of world interest.