Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
Claire Dederer
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. more
257 pages, Hardcover
First published Knopf
3.84
Rating
8347
Ratings
1503
Reviews
Claire Dederer
6 books 369 followers
Claire’s first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January, 2011. It will be published simultaneously in the UK by Bloomsbury.Claire is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, The Nation, New York, Yoga Journal, on Slate and Salon, and in newspapers across the country. Her writing has encompassed criticism, reporting, and the personal essay.
Dederer’s essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything (edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill) and Heavy Rotation (edited by Peter Terzian).
Before becoming a freelance journalist, Claire was the chief film critic at Seattle Weekly.
With her husband Bruce Barcott, Claire has co-taught writing at the University of Washington. She currently works with private students.
A proud fourth-generation Seattle native, Claire lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound with her family.
Community reviews
This book is half excellent and half terrible. First, it’s a great subject, horrible people who make great art is something that bothers all of us here I think. Claire Dederer asks all the right questions and rounds up all the usual suspects, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Hemingway, Picasso, JK Rowling…. Huh. What’s that you say. more
thank god i can go back to watching Annie Hall in peace. more
What do we do with terrible people in our lives. Nothing. We keep loving them. Monsters is an honest, elaborate meditation on the separation of the art and the artist’s biography and whether or not it is possible at all. In doing so Claire Dederer never claims to have the answer to the dilemma; she merely unfolds the problem, drawing from examples of her personal experiences, her personal admiration for the works of Woody Allen, Polanski and Picasso, and furthering by J. more
Frankly, the whole discussion about the cancellation of problematic artists is rather silly, because it's based on a false dichotomy: That we have to categorize artistic output as either morally good or morally bad in order to validate our consumption of it. In our post-postmodern world, we should by now have developed some tolerance for ambiguity, in this case an awareness of the complex interplay between our knowledge of the character of an artist, the power of their work, how the work might reflect said dubious character and what all that theoretical awareness does to our emotions towards creator and art. After Roland Barthes' declaration of the death of the author, he*she has long come back, but is not the same as before. Why isn't this evidently the status quo of the discussion for every art form. Dederer has written a highly entertaining book focusing on the perspective of a specific kind of consumer, namely the fan, so a person who feels deeply for the art, but struggles with the implications of the artist being a terrible human being. more
I think the problem is that I wanted this—and expected it—to be an entirely different book than what it was. There’s a lot that I felt disappointed by (it lacked areas of thought I think belong in the discussion, it felt self-serving to assuage the authors own guilt etc) but I think it just really suffers from being too broad. Is it memoir. Is it critical essays. Is it wise to cover a whole range of different artists and shove all their behaviour under one really big category. more
such an interesting essay collection examining the fan dilemma of separating the art from the artist, what constitutes a ‘monster’, and our complicity and morality when it comes to consuming the work of, and in some cases ‘loving’, artists who have done awful things. you won’t agree with every single point in here, but it’s a compelling, smart, and passionate insight into an age-old debate which no one will ever truly have the answers to. and as dederer states in the book, maybe it’s not really our job to have the answers. (dederer does, however, kind of come to her own conclusions on how she will move forward with these dilemmas. but it’s something each person must take the time to decide for themselves. more
I didn't get what I wanted from this one. There were far too many tangents and too many potted biographies of the artists being discussed. An interesting premise but one the author struggled to add depth to, resulting in the book feeling really padded out. more
**Rant alert**Haven’t read a work that bugged me as much as this one in forever. Men are monsters, right. We can all agree on that. And there’s soooo much material to craft a compelling argument on the topic of “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men. ” I mean, we all just lived through Kanye West’s 2022. more
First 3 outta 4 parts of this book are stellar. Just really great stuff. That third quarter is wonky at best. I liked the writing, book, and idea but some of the authors own biography isn’t addressed in a way that feels like a huge missed opportunity. Some of the better cultural criticism I’ve read in a while. more
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:“There is not some correct answer. You are not responsible for finding it. more
Claire Dederer discusses in Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma if we can separate art from artist/their biography. What do we do with the art of monstrous men. For me the answer is always firmly once I find out somebody has abused their position of power to harm others, their work is forever tainted in my mind. The name Woody Allen, for example, makes my skin crawl. I watched a documentary where Dylan and Mia Farrow spoke out about him and it actually broke my heart, whilst also admiring their courage and strength to speak out so candidly and publicly. more
I should have known I wouldn't get what I wanted from a memoirist, but I was eager to read anything on this topic. I'd much prefer a book from a psychologist or sociologist who can share further insight into human nature and culture, or a writer who researched and summarized great perspectives already out there in the era of #metoo. This book talks in circles without going in-depth or covering the many facets and intersections of art, fame, ambition, narcissism, and abuse. more
Ooof I think Claire Dederer mentions praxis only once in this book and it shows. Maybe some people find this book helpful and I don't want to poo-poo them. I don't think this book is entirely without merit, but I also don't think that this book is the "ambitious" book that the author says is her goal nor is it a deep dive into the question of meaningful art created by monstrous people that the book advertises itself as. I will separate this review into the reasons I did not like this book: 1. It feels fundamentally dishonest I think what I find frustrating is that this book feels to me like a dishonest attempt to address the subject this book claims to be about. more
READING VLOGMajor thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:Perhaps the most important book to come out of our cancel-culture society. Much like Dederer, Woody Allen's work had created quite an impression on my early life. This was before I could get a strong internet connection. This was still during a time I would visit the library for resources, to rent VHS tapes of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘳𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘨𝘦 to explore my sexuality at the age of eight, or even Bergman's 𝘚𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘨𝘦 (yes, I was absolutely this awfully precocious child--believe me, I was not fun at the birthday parties at Chuck-E-Cheese). When the news of Soon-Yi and Mia Farrow finally came to my attention (by way of Moses Farrow's blogspot letter), I was shocked. more
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. . more
An awful lot of navel gazing for a book that's classified as criticism and not a memoir. Like other readers I went into this expecting something else entirely. More criticism, more research, more fact-checking (FFS, are there not fact checkers anymore. There were so many patently false bits of biographical information about the 'monsters' covered in the book. ) and fewer irrelevant tangents about the writer's personal life. more
A masterpiece. One of the most insightful explorations of "feelings" and how the soul responds to work that, alas, has been created by monsters. Claire Dederer is not merely super smart, she can be very, very funny. Once you read this extraordinary book, you will be fascinated by your deeply personal responses to the work of Woody Allen, Miles Davis, Doris Lessing, and so many others. . more
What’s a person to do if you love the art, music, or book but don’t approve of the behavior of the artist, musician, or author. And don’t get me started on asking the same question about politicians, preachers, and theologians. These are questions I’ve pondered myself, so when I came across this book that explores the morality of cancel culture I decided to see what the author had to say. It’s not cancel culture according to the author but rather an era when information is widely available, and it's now more difficult to ignore certain unpleasant facts. Also, the combination of #MeToo snd Hollywood access tapes placed this issue on steroids. more
I originally thought I was going to devour this in one sitting, but boy oh boy was I wrong. After the first couple of chapters I realised that I wanted to take my time with this one. I wanted to sit and think about the chapter I had just read, dissect it and let it sit in my thoughts. This book covers the monstrous behaviours of Polanski, Hemingway, Michael Jackson, JK Rowling, Elvis, Motley Crue, honestly the list of people that featured in this book made my heart heavy, because it was in no way a comprehensive list, despite the amount of people getting a mention, and a lot of the musicians were people I admired, and now having looked into some of the claims in this book I don’t know whether or not I will be able to listen to them. I’ve long often struggled, especially with musicians, over whether I can separate the artist from their art. more
I liked her essays on Nabokov and “abandoning mothers,” but especially the overall tone which—surprisingly, given the subject matter—is not that of someone who claims the moral high ground. This might leave readers wanting more—more bite, more monstrous behaviours—but it’s meant to make you think about your own views on controversial figures and not have the final word…which in the Twitter era is rare. more
"Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art. "Review/personal reflections on the book’s subject matter. Feel free to disagree with me, this is an entirely personal perspective on a thorny issue. This book had been on my radar for a while, because I find the topic it explores truly fascinating, but I wasn’t in any particular rush to read it. Then it happened: a musician whose work had meant so much to me for almost twenty years was accused of sexual misconduct, first by one woman, then by a dozen, his band broke up, their label folded and a huge stack of records I have cherished and found strength and comfort in now looks… weird and tainted because that man used a very progressive and inclusive message and persona to conceal some terrible actions. more
An incredible work of analysis and cultural criticism with significant insight into the question of what to do with the art of monstrous people and related topics. . more
Monsters is a lot of things--smart, incisive, insightful, absorbing--but more than anything, it is such an impressively thoughtful book in so many ways. To begin, Monsters is a thoughtful book because it understands that monstrousness is contingent. What makes a monster. To what extent does an artist's monstrousness bleed into--or, in Dederer's words, "stain"--their work. What do we do when the artist whose work we love turns out to be, in fact, a monster. more
I've been struggling to put into words my feelings about the art of monstrous men. Luckily, Claire Dederer is here to offer one possible path out of my moral quagmire. Sometimes I love a piece of work so much that I struggle to represent the experience in any way that is reflective of the book's content. It feels that way with Monsters, but I do have some quick hit feelings:-The audiobook is terrific and I couldn't imagine experiencing the book for the first time in any other format. -The book is erudite without being pretentious or preachy. more
I have seen Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma recommended a couple of times recently. I loved the concept of this book, and the author makes some good points, but I just couldn't finish it as I couldn't stand the author. I found her incredibly pretentious and self-absorbed (which she shares with many of the 'monsters' in the book) and although that seems to be part of her point, I just didn't appreciate it. I stopped an hour from the end as I really didn't care what else she had to say. I'm clearly not the target audience for this. more
„Polanski would be no problem for the viewer at all – just another example of how some men happen to be black holes – if the films were bad. But they‘re not. “5/5Knyga ne tiems, kuriems nerūpi. Knyga tiems, kuriems skauda ir kurie klausia – o ką dabar su ta meile daryti. Ką daryti su meile kūriniui, jei kūrėjas – monstras. more
I'm not even going to pretend to do a critical review. This was different than I expected, a bizarre mea culpa. I give one star to the cover because. The book is divided into three separate sections/concepts. The first is the obvious do I judge the art or the artist dilemma focused on male artists. more
Dederer doesn't aim to tell you what you should do with the work of terrible people. What she offers is a refreshingly honest meditation on the topic so if you were afraid of this one being a defense of "cancel culture" fear not this isn't what you'll find. I don't think I'm any closer to a less amorphous take on the subject than I was before but I feel validated in some regards so there's that. . more