Monsters

There I was, by myself, trying to drag a one-ton sledge down the street and hating myself for getting nowhere, when this book came along and said, “It’s ridiculous this was asked of you. Let me buy you a coffee and explain.” I know I’m not the only person who has struggled with (in my case) loving Rosemary’s Baby and hating Roman Polanksi for what he’s done, or memorizing Woody Allen’s stand-up (ask me about the moose) and not being able to look at him anymore.

Sitting down with this book was like having a kind, clear-eyed, and infinitely well-read… show more.

As an arts journalist who loves few things more than to introduce someone to a creative work they might come to love, the personality type I most identify with is “fan.”

This “biography of the audience,” as the author describes it, and its reckoning with the tough questions of what we should do when an artist we admire turns out to be deplorable, is just the kind of cultural criticism I would (and do) eagerly recommend. 

Dederer takes on the most troubling of questions for avid consumers of art: What do we do with good art made by bad people?

How do we resolve the contradiction of loving a Polanski film but knowing he had sex with an underage girl? I'm a huge Patricia Highsmith fan, but she was bigoted, racist, and, well, generally unpleasant. How should I feel about that?

I heard an interview with Dederer on the Gray Area podcast, and I was hooked because she wasn't approaching the question from a moralistic standpoint but from a human and conflicted standpoint. In her book,… show more.

It sounds like this book could be another one about non-human animals. Monsters, after all, by definition, are not human, but this book is actually radically different from the types of books I usually read and so perhaps that’s why it has stayed with me so long after reading it.

Instead of a book about nature, this book digs into human nature. She examines the ways that people feel about the art they love even after the artist, often male, always human, is revealed to be some kind of “monster.”

Looking at examples like Roman Polansky, Woody Allen, Pablo Picasso,… show more.

The whole time I was reading, I had a feeling that the book was written just for me—which is the beauty of a perfectly crafted book, like how a great musician makes you feel as if they are singing directly to you in the crowd.

This book has charisma. I bought it for smart takes on whether it is okay to listen to, read, and laugh with the terrible men who make some of my favorite art, and it did deliver those, but it did more, too. This book interrogated and complicated the idea of fandom and cultural consumption… show more.

Claire Dederer’s Monsters offers a brilliant and thought-provoking reckoning over our engagement with problematic artists. 

The book is a combination of rigorous social and cultural analysis - of what makes great art, what elevates art to greatness, and what allows us to put certain artists on pedestals - and Dederer’s personal relationship to each of the artists she looks at (they range from Picasso to Woody Allen to Michael Jackson).

Dederer picks away at the knotty problems we all face when, for example, discovering our wedding song was penned by a paedophile, or that our favourite painter beat his mistress.… show more.