Can you truly separate the author from the work, or does context inevitably change the reading?

I’ve noticed that discussions about separating the art from the artist often get reduced to slogans, but in practice it feels much messier than that.

There are books I still admire stylistically or emotionally, even after learning uncomfortable things about the author and others where that knowledge fundamentally altered how the work landed for me. Not in a moralistic way, just in how I experienced the text.

It makes me wonder whether separation is something we choose intellectually, or whether it actually depends on the kind of book, the kind of author, and the reader’s own relationship to the work.

Do you think it’s genuinely possible to separate the two?
Or does knowing more context inevitably become part of the reading, whether we want it to or not?

I’m curious how others here navigate that tension.