do problematic writers get a free pass after death?

why does death make it easier to forgive problematic authors, and what does that say about how we consume their work?

as someone who enjoys weird fiction, i’ve definitely read some of h.p. lovecraft’s work. probably his most well-known creation is the cthulhu mythos, those cosmic beings older than time, the fear of the unknown, the insignificance of humanity. but if you’ve never heard of lovecraft, let me share a line i once read that stuck with me:

“if racism were a person, it would be h.p. lovecraft.”

yeah. he was racist. like, SOOPER DOOPER racist.

i remember this one day i was at a bookstore asking for weird fiction or horror recommendations. the staff instantly said, “start with lovecraft.” but when i asked about romance books, they replied, “i could recommend colleen hoover ummm but she’s problematic tho”

i laughed.
lovecraft? an extreme racist, even for his own time.
hoover? defended her son who raped a woman.
both are problematic. and yes, i’ve read both their works, but the reactions to them are wildly different.

why do we forgive dead authors more easily?

a friend of mine once covered the front of it ends with us out of embarrassment after learning about hoover. a week later, she casually brought the old man and the sea to class, without a hint of shame. oddly, that guilt fades when the author is no longer alive. as if death acts like an eraser.

so i started wondering:
why do we feel more comfortable reading problematic authors once they’re dead?

is it because they’re no longer a threat?

maybe it’s because they can no longer profit from their fame. no royalties, no movie deals, no podcasts, no live appearances. it feels like reading their work isn’t the same as supporting them. it feels more like reading an artifact from the past, not something that’s shaping the world today.

is that why we still read ezra pound’s poetry, even though he was openly fascist?
is that why hemingway is still considered a literary giant, though he probably wouldn’t survive a week on social media today?

we hear this a lot.

“that’s just how things were back then.”

historical relativism is often used as a shield. but we have to be careful. lovecraft wasn’t simply a product of his time, he exceeded it in how extreme his views were. even people in his time thought he went too far. that means the era didn’t shape him, he made choices.

which leads to a deeper question:
are we truly being objective, or are we just more comfortable because the controversy feels distant and ‘over’?

writers who were cemented into legacy. many problematic writers have already been canonized, taught in schools, quoted endlessly, and praised as “foundations” of modern literature. that status makes it harder to challenge them. they’ve become untouchable, not because they deserve to be, but because we’ve built our stories around them.

maybe that’s why it feels easier to “forgive.”
they’re already part of the literary furniture.

does death cleanse morality?

this question lingers in my head:
does someone become “safe” to consume once they die?

because let’s be honest, ideas don’t die.
if toxic values are embedded in their work, and we keep reading it, sharing it, and normalizing it, then in a way, those ideas are still alive. through us. through our silence. through our unwillingness to confront what we consume.

i’m not calling for book burnings or telling people to abandon the classics. but i do believe in reading consciously. knowing the author behind the words. knowing that not all legacies are sacred. that even so-called masterpieces can carry rotten ideas.

time might help us forget.
but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t choose to remember.

and no, i’m not really here to argue whether we should separate the art from the artist, or to hand out rules on what people should read.
this isn’t about cancel culture, or moral scorecards, or purity tests.

i just wanted to ask why silence feels easier when the author’s no longer breathing.
why death softens things we’d never tolerate from the living.
and what that says about us our comfort, our memory, our complicity.

because the stories we keep, shape the world we live in.
the real question isn’t whether we can read problematic authors.
it’s how we can read them without forgetting who we’re letting into our minds.

death doesn’t absolve.
it just makes us forget to ask better questions.