Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

by Claire Dederer

Hardcover, 2023

Call number

700.1 DED

Collection

Nonfiction

Genres

Art & Design

General Nonfiction

Biography & Memoir

Publication

Knopf (2023), 288 pages

Description

"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"--… (more)

Media reviews

Delancyplace

Famed composer Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism was an obsession: "'[For Richard Wagner, anti-Semitism] was more than a bizarre peccadillo, beyond a prejudice: it was an obsession, a monomania, a full-blown neurosis. No conversation with Wagner ever occurred without a detour on the subject of

Judaism. When, towards the end of Wagner's life, the painter Renoir had a sitting with him, Wagner interrupted his own pleasant flow of small talk with a sudden unprovoked denunciation of Jews which rapidly became rancid,' [said Simon Callow]. "Wagner also wrote at length about his obsession -- that essay Fry would have liked to forestall, 'Judaism in Music,' was published anonymously in 1850, the same year Lohengrin premiered. It describes the nature of 'the Jew musician' -- we've barely gotten started and we're already in choppy waters. The use of the word 'Jew' as an adjective is generally speaking not a good sign. My friend Alex Blumberg once observed to me as we walked through the Chicago neighborhood historically known as Jew Town: 'The word Jew is fine as a noun, starts to be a problem as an adjective, and is totally not okay as a verb.' "Writes Wagner, 'The Jew -- who, as everyone knows, has a God all to himself -- in ordinary life strikes us primarily by his outward appearance, which, no matter to what European nationality we belong, has something disagreeably foreign to that nationality: instinctively we wish to have nothing in common with a man who looks like that.' "Wagner is ramping up, working himself into a frenzy, and the modern reader in turn feels a mounting abhorrence, as well as a kind of lofty disdain for what we perceive as his cluelessness. But we tell ourselves he didn't know better. "And yet Wagner bases his entire rant on the fact that he did know better. He positions his screed as a dose of Limbaughesque real talk in the face of liberal platitudes calling for an end to anti-Semitism: 'We have to explain to ourselves the involuntary repellence possessed for us by the nature and personality of the Jews, so as to vindicate that instinctive dislike which we plainly recognise as stronger and more overpowering than our conscious zeal to rid ourselves thereof.' "He's making the point that he and his brethren don't want to revile Jews. This is some real 'I'm the victim here' shit. Wagner insists that he possesses -- we all possess -- a 'conscious zeal to rid ourselves' of the 'instinctive dislike,' but an honest man must wrestle with these feelings of 'involuntary repellence,' Hey, man, he's just describing how everyone really feels. Incidentally, this is an example of how insidious the word 'we' can be -- by employing it, Wagner normalizes and universalizes his own demented and hateful perspective, and suggests that all those fighting against anti-Semitism are simply deluded or evasive when it comes to their own natures. "From Wagner's perspective, to say one is not anti-Semitic is to lie: 'Even to-day we only purposely belie ourselves, in this regard, when we think it necessary to hold immoral and taboo all open proclamation of our natural repugnance against the Jewish nature. Only in quite the latest times do we seem to have reached an insight, that it is more rational (vernünftiger) to rid ourselves of that strenuous self-deception' -- he means here the self-deception that we actually might not be repelled by Jews -- 'so as quite soberly instead to view the object of our violent sympathy and bring ourselves to understand a repugnance still abiding with us in spite of all our Liberal bedazzlements.'"

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User reviews

LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

I have mixed feelings. First of all, much of this is literary criticism, and I read books like eating potato chips, stuffing myself with one after another not fully tasting any of them, so I am inadequate at literary criticism. We're all wondering now about what to do about artists who turn out to

be monsters, can we still consume their work? Can we still love them? Dederer analyzes these monsters but includes people who are not active defilers of other people but are just imperfect. So she has Roman Polanski, Miles Davis, and Picasso mixed in with J. K. Rowling and women who don't devote their entire attention to their children because they want also to pursue art. Then way at the end of the book, we realize that the reason she includes herself in the monster category is not that she left her teenage son for a month in order to attend a wonderful artist workshop but that she is a recovering alcoholic. It's hard to own our own monstrosity, but at last, she does. For me, the most meaningful part of the book was the part emphasizing economics. Capitalism wants us to think that we as individuals have to judge the monsters. Our paltry consumption or refusal to consume their art will make a difference just as our recycling can manage global warming. Capitalism and the patriarchy are the ones in charge, so she ends by saying, as does Woody Allen, "the heart wants what the heart wants."

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8 more

LibraryThing member annbury

This terrific and terrifically irritating book starts out with the question of how should we think about great art produced by bad men, and proceeds through a much wider landscape. In the end, she is dealing with how do we deal with the problem of human evil, in others and in ourselves. I disagreed

with a fair bit of what she says (on cancel culture and late capitalism in particular) and agreed intensely with some of what she says (no spoilers). But when I finished the book, I felt that my perspectives had shifted a little, that I had learned something. And that's a gift.

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LibraryThing member spinsterrevival

I may have to return to this as I don’t think that I have many of my own comps as the author does as far as art she loves that was created by horrible men (a lot of the stuff she talked about hasn’t really been on my radar), but it definitely got me thinking more about how the mighty fall and

who keeps them down or raises them back up.

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LibraryThing member adaorhell

disappointing. works better as an essay, sags too much as a book, and the argument is sort of like well, whatever, and I can't help but want to nail an ambiguity.

LibraryThing member suesbooks

Thiis critic discusses the difficulty os separating art from its creator. She talks about and gives many examples of problems maaany of us face.
she spent much time discussing how men and women are treated so differently from each other, and that was appreciated. These problems do not seem to have

definite answers, and I'm not sure I was given more information to help with those decisions.

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LibraryThing member Iudita

I was eager to read this and thought it was an excellent topic for a book but unfortunately it fell short for me. I wanted a neutral, well presented analyses of the issue and what I got was the author’s personal opinions and personal examples. In all fairness to Dederer, it says right in the

blurb that it is “a deeply personal book” so I can’t fault her for delivering exactly what the book blurb says you will get. She covers a lot of good material and she does it well, in her own way. It just wasn’t the book I was hoping to read.

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LibraryThing member rmarcin

Quick read about the people we admire and their monstrous deeds -- and whether this should disqualify us from consuming their work. Examples - Polanski, Wagner, Picasso, Rowling, Hemingway, Allen, and others.
Dederer examines the works, and the artist's misdeeds. She recognizes their failings, and

poses whether we should ignore the genius, and why some are more forgiven than others. She addresses all of this in the era of Me Too and Trumpism.
Interesting book.

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LibraryThing member Berly

I highly recommended this book examining the art and work of people who also happen to have committed heinous crimes. The central question: does the crime mean we can no longer be fans and learn from their creativity? Artists include Polanski, Hemingway, Michael Jackson, Picasso, Miles Davis and

many more. Great book to ponder on your own or in a book club!!! Here are just a few interesting quotes:

Calling someone a monster didn’t solve the problem of what do with the work. I could denounce him all I wanted to, but Polanski’s work still called to me. This insistent calling—and my unwillingness to throw away the work—disrupted my idea of myself. It made me (and others) questions my claim to feminism. (p.46)

And of course no one is entirely a monster. People are complex. To call someone a monster is to reduce them to just once aspect of the self. (p.46)

A monster is “Someone whose behavior disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.” (p.46)

The stain begins with an act, a moment in time, but then it travels from that moment, like a tea bag steeping in water, coloring the entire life. It works its way forward and backward in time. (p.49)

Mass media—There is no longer any escaping biography. Even within my own lifetime, I’ve seen a massive shift. Biography used to be something you sought out, yearned for, actively pursued. Now is falls on your head all day long. (P.51)

When we love an artist, and we identify with them, do we feel shame on their behalf when they become stained? Or do we shame them more brutally, cast them out more finally, because we want to sever the identification? (p.64)

What response, what opinion, what criticism do you have that is not tied up with history? (p.76)

And other topics creep in too, like Cancel Culture, white men not wanting to be blamed for everything, does history frame/excuse the crimes and are women artists who “abandon” their children in order to find time to create monsters as well?

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LibraryThing member foggidawn

In this book, Dederer looks at the question of what audiences are to do with the work of "monstrous" creators, those who do terrible things that stain their public image and, therefore, the public perception of their work. Can one still love the music of Michael Jackson? The art of Pablo Picasso?

Roman Polanski's films, or Woody Allen's? The list goes on, but the question is always pretty much the same.

I was a regular viewer of The Cosby Show when I was growing up. As an adult, you can at least try to separate actors from roles they play, but to my child self, Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable was "America's Dad." So, that's the #MeToo revelation that hit home hardest for me, though of course there have been many others. I think most people these days have experienced the sinking feeling in their stomach that comes with reevaluating some favorite work of art when faced with new biographical information about the artist. So, what do you do? The portion of this book that focused on this question was smart and thought-provoking. I was less enamored with the parts of the book that veered into memoir, or to trying to explore "monstrous" behavior in women (usually related to abandoning their own children, though there were other examples). There are a few repetitive bits, and occasionally Dederer's rarified language use comes off as pretentious. Though I basically agree with her conclusion, I'm not left with a strong feeling about the book, or that it helped me explore the topic in any significant way beyond the mental work I've already put in to it. So, somewhat recommended?

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