One of my favorite books of criticism. Claire wrote the book I’ve been looking for, exploring the murky question of what we do with the art of monstrous people. In 13 essays, Claire explores different subjects of this inquiry, engaging the reader in a conversation that left me weepy upon its closing. I interviewed Claire on my podcast, Reading the Room.

I recieved this as an e-galley from NetGalley

As with all searing essay collections and works of criticism I have to read it in parts- sometimes too much truth is too overwhelming. Especially when written with such percision as Dederer does here.

Dederer interrogates the experience art in the age of #MeToo and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Dederer also adds into discussion the idea of women as percieved as 'Monsters' for rejecting the traditional mores of motherhood.

Claire Dederer takes the reader's hand and walks with them through the inner war that comes with loving the work of a monstrous person.

This isn't a heavily academic treatise, but that is its strength. For example, the author loves the films of Roman Polanski who also raped an underage girl. No amount of citations and peer-review can tell us what to do with his filmography, which includes undisputed masterpieces. Can we admire the movies without admiring the man? If his victim forgave him, does that absolve those who like his films and continue to support his work?

There are no easy answers here so I appreciate the lack of prescriptive advice. However, I can see this being frustrating for anyone who just wants the answer to whether they can enjoy the movies, music, etc. of a talented person who has done monstrous things. If you can let this go and go along with the author's thought processes, I highly recommend this book.

Claire Dederer, an author I already love and admire, takes on an incredible feat here: what do we do with the art made by monstrous men? It's a worthy subject to tackle, one that does not have a clean answer and something that I've thought a lot about myself, as an avid audience member of art, film, and music. The book starts off strong, with nuanced, personal, and eye-opening chapters on Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. We then meander into Picasso (timely!), Hemingway, and unsurprisingly Nabokov.

Lastly we have the female monsters (besides a slight detour into Rowling), all who are mothers who have abandoned their children in one way or another. Equating these women with rapists and abusers was a bit of a stretch, but I certainly ended up learning a lot about women like Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell, who I didn't know much about. The chapter on Valerie Solanas was also fascinating.

I certainly don't feel fully equipped, even after reading this incredible book, to give my own thoughts on this (though I certainly lean towards yeah, I want to avoid art made by terrible people because I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about what they have done while consuming the art). But! I don't have to give my own opinion because I urge you to pick up MONSTERS if you are interested in this subject because Dederer does a magnificent job with a vast, wholly unmanageable and age-old conundrum.

This book is a MUST read! I have spent a lot of time working in the entertainment industry and have battled these topics within myself for years. This book was so well done and really made me look at things differently.

I had heard about this book during an author interview on NPR recently and I was so curious. Separating a monster from their beloved work has been on my mind recently, and this book really broke it down. Well-written, insightful, and honest. Will definitely purchase for the collection.

Really thought provoking. So much better than a short story collection - it was like reading a really captivating news feed. The essays felt especially relatable in the bookstagram world right now, and I appreciated that they weren’t black and white, but made you think for yourself.

Timely! Interesting combination of personal reporting and cultural insight. Enjoyed this nuanced take and exploration of a timely and tricky topic to navigate.

Is this the most important book of the year? Likely! Wrestling with the creations of, and imprints of those creations, monsters and the vile and foul, is something that will never end, and this book masterfully tackles it.

Claire Dederer's MONSTERS is brilliant. I'll be incorporating chapters from the book as well as the questions she wrestles in many of my classes. Even my high school students are questioning how to reconcile their love of Harry Potter as children with their vehement disagreement (and dislike) of J. K. Rowling's TERF politics. Dederer's book is timely and thoughtful--and offers no easy answers. It's a must read.

This digital Advanced Readers Copy was received from the publisher via Netgalley.

I have been looking forward to reading this book because it deals with a topic that I have been pondering lately. What happens if we discover the person behind a beloved piece of art has committed monstrous acts? Author, Claire Dederer, looks at multiple artists (musicians, artists, writers and filmmakers) and discusses whether they should still be relevant after being outed as a “monster.” What I liked most about this book is that Dederer demonstrates an open-mindedness and empathy towards the love of art and the conflicted feelings we have towards the artist. She aptly conveys what it is like to be completely moved by a movie or a book or a song and wonder if we should no longer have those feelings if the person who created it abused women, or was antisemitic or abandoned her children. The only answer is that there is no easy way to completely separate the art from the artist and maybe we shouldn’t but people overall are imperfect consumers. I did feel that this book could have been tighter and that there were unneeded tangents, but I so appreciate the way in which Dederer explored this topic.

Not for me. Partly because it featured a lot of the sort of naval-gazing memoirs that i most dislike, but more because I just don’t ‘get’ it. I’m just not a fannish sort of person. I don’t love artists, however much I love their art. So it’s a whole long, angsty book worrying about a problem I don’t have and have a hard time even imagining having. Like I said, just not for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC for my review.

Major 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. Disgusted. In denial. A few years later, Ronan bagged Weinstein and the world shifted. Left and right, people cancelled. One awful thing and you were done. And then it became hard to talk about the monsters you've loved.

Dederer explores this. Comes to the idea of a stain. Does a single stain ruin a silk dress? So much so that the stain becomes the dress? Perhaps for some, but for others, it's just a stain. It'll wash out. It can be taken to the cleaners. It can be fixed. But the stain should not totally ruin the dress.

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.

I mean, I was surprised with the Wagner mention that she didn't mention Leni Riefenstahl. Especially when she glossed over the Allen-apologists for how 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘯 must be looked at for its aesthetics. Riefenstahl was the very queen of aesthetics, a female champion of her time, while also being a nazi.

But the book becomes personal for her when it comes to her children where it somewhat slips into memoir. This was a choice that took too long to get to, and a choice I don't think particularly fit into the book completely well (and I find this particularly amusing given how Dederer critiques memoirs and explicitly tells us what a memoir is and should be), but, without it, I wouldn't have known about Joni Mitchell or how to review the sixties and feminist violence through Plath and Solanas. Thankfully, the last few chapters tie the pretty bow on how we should go about monstrous artists with Cleage's 𝘔𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴.

Love.

Isn't that the be-all end-all answer to all the pains and glories of the world?

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.."

Face it. The heart wants what it wants.

Here, Dederer writes the anti-cancel culture book. Allows us not to feel guilty about our pleasures and allows room for the gray space.

The last time I watched 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘯 was when I was 19. I came back to it after so many years, having watched 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘝. 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸 on HBO. having avoided 𝘈𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 by Allen himself (because good GOD the quotes of misogyny I previewed, I could not muster the time or courage to go through with it). But I watched it again just after finishing Dederer's book. My stomach churned at the beginning lines. Her again. 17. Hemingway. Woody, 42. The nonchalance of it all.

But as soon as the film slipped into the beauty of New York in black and white, even the way Hemingway lounged in Woody's apartment under a bell of light with a backdrop of books behind her, I could not help but let the aesthetics speak. And they show up again and again, the planetarium. The carriage ride. The opening. God, the opening.

Love is complicated. And so are people. Dederer isn't saying that we should write off a work of art simply because the person is bad, but that we can be smart about it. Talk about it. Create a conversation that knows the difference between ethical thoughts and moral feelings.

I am a huge Claire Dederer fan! She’s a master of craft and until now I thought of her mostly as a memoirist— and of the best currently in the genre. This title shows just how multifaceted and shimmering she is in all her talents. She’s an incredible literary/cultural critic here and is giving nuance to this moment in time. Nuanced conversation seems to be a thing of the past. One is either hated or loved. On the right history or not. This book delves into how complicated our feelings are for these men who have hurt so many and that love is complicated, chaotic, and savage. It’s also a form of loss and grief. I can’t wait to listen to this in audio format because I think I’ll absorb it better that way. Thank you for this arc!

I was so engaged by the Paris Review essay that sparked this book, and the book is super interesting. I appreciate Dederer's attention to complexities and nuance here. Her writing style is warm and engaging and also often humorous as well as sharp and vivid. I can imagine teaching this book in a graduate class.