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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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91/99
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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
"Dederer offers nuanced answers, challenging the assumption that boycotting is always the best response."
"On the other hand, she believes in art."
"Dederer begins to take apart these claims to objectivity by teasing out the connections between art and its creator and the connections between the critic and their own subjectivity ..."
"Although Dederer has done her homework, her style is breezy and confessional ..."
"In contrast to so many nonfiction books adapted from articles, Monsters doesn't stretch a singular thesis over several hundred pages."
"This is a good subject, and a perennial one...and Dederer certainly talks a big game as she begins."
"One of Dederer's charming or annoying writerly traits is the habit of acknowledging that an argument is shaky ..."
"By turns emotional and measured, this is a valuable meditation on some of the era's most urgent cultural questions."
"Maybe you can hear in those quotes how alive Dederer's own critical language is."
"But I also found myself disagreeing with or questioning a lot, resisting her sweeping 'we' ...For an author who rightly shudders over the cheapening of the word 'obsessed' to use the phrases 'make work' — the new 'make love'?"
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