Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Product Information

Bringing erudition, emotion, and a down-to-earth style to this pressing problem, Dederer presents her finest work to date.”

But it's true. It's love, emotional confidence, that urges us to find joy, pleasure, and a stance in the way we say, "𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.."

Customer reviews

An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life. This timely book inhabits both the marvelous and the monstrous with generosity and wit.”

Somewhere in the middle of the book, Dederer goes on to target monstrous women, shaming those that abandon their children. This comes off as round-about and personal as we finally understand why Dederer took this path.The book explores the suggestion that being a monster is part of being a creative genius. In other words, if they were forced to behave properly they would no longer be creative. Pablo Picasso is discussed as a supposed example of such an artist. The author sarcastically notes (spoiler alert) this type of genius does not include women per prevailing social standards. Monsters is an incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time. It’s thrillingly sharp, appropriately doubtful, and more fun than you would believe, given the pressing seriousness of the subject matter. Claire Dederer’s mind is a wonder, her erudition too; I now want her to apply them to everything I’m interested in.”

An] insightful exploration . . . Dederer’s case studies include Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Miles Davis, whose work she considers brilliant and important. What’s a fan to do? Dederer offers nuanced answers, challenging the assumption that boycotting is always the best response.” At the same time: “The stain—spreading, creeping, wine-dark, inevitable—is biography’s aftermath. The person does the crime and it’s the work that gets stained” (50). “When someone says we ought to separate the art from the artist, they’re saying: Remove the stain. Let the work be unstained. But that’s not how stains work. We watch the glass fall to the floor; we don’t get to decide whether the wine will spread across the carpet” (45). The chapter on Nabokov is called “The Anti-Monster” because Vlad himself was in no way shape or form a monster but he wrote an appallingly accurate book about Humbert Humbert, the pedophile, leading CD to worry Dederer provides a fascinating new way of looking at how the work and lives of problematic artists are bound together. She poses so many topical questions, plays with so many pertinent ideas, that I'm still thinking about this book long after I finished.”I read Monsters as part of an ill-fated attempt to replace the unsatisfying internet culture writing that I sometimes let clog my mornings with book-length works of criticism. This book in particular because I was worried my own perspective on the question—what to do with great art by horrible men, basically—was in danger of ossifying. I wanted to challenge myself. Alas, Dederer and I basically agree: Claire Dederer is a memoir and essay writer who I had never heard of but she decided to look into this topic once she hit a weird personal wall when struggling to come to terms with the fact that she still is able to absolutely adore Polanski's movies while knowing of and being repulsed by the atrocity he committed. Why? How? Why? So she started thinking and exploring art by what we now like to call "problematic" people and our relationship with that, and then #Metoo happened and suddenly cancel culture for all kind of things was en vogue and she realized her subject of interest had gone viral. So she expanded and wrote this book (and I believe a viral article in between). A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read. Dederer holds the moral ambiguity of her subject matter, landing her arguments with precision and flair. It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations.”