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What are we to do with all these magnifcent creeps? An ancient question, ever refreshed, since the world never stops popping them out: Thomas Jefferson, T. S. Eliot, Ty Cobb, Roman Polanski, O. J. Simpson, Michael Vick, Lance Armstrong, Woody Allen, Heisman winner/possible rapist Jameis Winston Though they’re always with us, the question of if and how we allow them into our lives flows and ebbs. Lately, like some bum septic tank, it’s been erupting.

It’s Dylan Farrow who’s got us in the hot seat now. On the eve of an already cognitively dissonant Super Bowlthe angel on my left whispering Do you really want to be complicit in all this future brain damage? while the demon on my right howled _Just watch the damn game!_she posed that question: What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: When I was 7 years old, Woody Allensexually assaulted me. The j’accuse teleported me to my frst week in college, to the singular mix of irritation, amusement, shame, and UGGGHHH I experienced when a luminous coed laid her lunch tray next to mine, gamely introduced herself, asked if I was enjoying my burger, then icily announced she was a vegetarianfor moral reasons.

The UGGGHHH, that anguished wet burp that bubbles up whenever someone grafftis a cherished book or flm or gridiron victory with a moral complication_you know he hated Jewsslept with a 13-year-oldstrangled dogs_is manifold. Yes, there’s a petulant eye roll for the nag who won’t let you enjoy Jameis Winston’s freworks. But most of that UGGGHHH points inward: She’s probably right. And: Nothing is pure, nothing simple. We already know this, of course. It’s just thatif we were to stop and bear witness to every wrong in the worldto, say, the infnity of horror inherent in a slice of baconwe’d be unable to navigate our way through even a single day. The work it takes to stay morally open-eyed _UGGGHHH_it makes a man sleepy.

Days passed. I read every Allen-related thing but concluded nothing. (Who could?) I couldn’t dispel the irritating sense of obligation Farrow’s question had instilled. Obligation towhat? Hate Woody Allen? Boycott his movies? Hard as I tried, I couldn’t connect in the way she was demanding. Fact is, I’ve always tried to separate who people are from what they create. Philip Roth once bristled when, during an interview, I professed my gratitude for him and his work. He felt my sentiments revealed a cloying, tabloidy eagerness to read his fction as confession. To Roth, this habitequating a person with his work, judging one by the otherasks the wrong questions, doesn’t even qualify as reading, and is, in fact, the end of the literary era.