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Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
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44/99
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6/99
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About This Book
From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, a passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of #MeToo, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. In this unflinching, deeply personal book that expands on her instantly viral Paris Review essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Claire Dederer asks: Can we love the work of Hemingway, Polanski, Naipaul, Miles Davis, or Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? She explores the audience's relationship with artists from Woody Allen to Michael Jackson, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
Reviews
"In contrast to so many nonfiction books adapted from articles, Monsters doesn't stretch a singular thesis over several hundred pages."
"There are no easy answers, but Dederer's candid appraisal of her own relationship with troubling artists and the lucidity with which she explores what it means to love their work open fresh ways of thinking about problematic artists."
"The voice she ultimately developed and deploys here is conversational, clear and bold without being strident ..."
"Occasionally the book feels as if it's wandering from the mark ..."
"The feeling grows that she doesn't know what she's doing ..."
"Dederer is at her best on such complicities—her own fondness for assholes, our cultural fascination with monsters—and less convincing when in a dudgeon, or deploying her feelings and experiences as intellectual credentials."
"Dederer...locates the urgency of the question of how to treat the work of 'monster' artists and writers in the power of fandom ...Bringing erudition, emotion, and a down-to-earth style to this pressing problem, Dederer presents her finest work to date."
"In criticism, as in memoir, the only way to work through these biases is to admit them—if not to others, at least to oneself."
"To collapse categories of privilege and agency in the face of capitalism is to pretend that a person of privilege doesn't have agency at all ..."
"Although Dederer has done her homework, her style is breezy and confessional ..."
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