Monsters : a fan's dilemma / Claire Dederer.
Publisher: London : Sceptre, 2023Description: 288 pages ; 24 cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: BDZ0051891666ISBN: 9781399715034 (hbk.) :Subject(s): Arts -- Moral and ethical aspects | Art and Design | The arts: general issues | Biography: arts & entertainment | Ethical issues & debates | Individual artists, art monographs | Ethics & moral philosophy | Feminism & feminist theory | Philosophy | Theory of art | Literature: history & criticism | History of philosophy, philosophical traditionsDDC classification: 700.1 LOC classification: NX180.E8Summary: A spiky and insightful consideration of how we - the fan - should respond to good art made by bad people ***BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK***'Funny, lively and convivial... how rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, SUNDAY TIMES'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILLA passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo, and whether we can separate an artist's work from their biography.What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.'A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read . . . It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations' NATHAN FILER'Wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off' LISA TADDEO'An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time' NICK HORNBYItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 700.1 DED (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 114191 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
'Funny, lively and convivial ... how rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, SUNDAY TIMES
'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILL
' Monsters is extraordinary - engaging, enraging, provocative, and brilliant' ANN PATCHETT
A passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo, and whether we can separate an artist's work from their biography.
What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?
Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.
*BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK*
'A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read . . . It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations' NATHAN FILER
'W ise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off' LISA TADDEO
'A n incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time ' NICK HORNBY
A spiky and insightful consideration of how we - the fan - should respond to good art made by bad people ***BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK***'Funny, lively and convivial... how rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read' MEGAN NOLAN, SUNDAY TIMES'An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life' JENNY OFFILLA passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo, and whether we can separate an artist's work from their biography.What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.'A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read . . . It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations' NATHAN FILER'Wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off' LISA TADDEO'An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time' NICK HORNBY
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Building on her Paris Review essay "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?," Dederer (Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning) tackles that question and a host of others entangled with it. For example, she asks who decides what counts as a genius. And how does society decide which "problematic" artists people can and cannot still love? While often-debated figures such as Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are mentioned in the book's inquiries, the other subjects range across history and gender as well. That includes composer Richard Wagner, known for his antisemitism, and novelist Doris Lessing, who was said to have abandoned her first two children and her marriage to write. Emerging from Dederer's reflections is the plain truth that every personal response to art is inseparable not only from the artist's past but also the history of each member of its audience. VERDICT By turns emotional and measured, this is a valuable meditation on some of the era's most urgent cultural questions.--Kathleen McCallisterPublishers Weekly Review
What's a fan to do when they love the art, but hate the artist? asks book critic and essayist Dederer (Love and Trouble) in this nuanced and incisive inquiry. She contends that "consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting," those of the artist and the audience, and it's the plight of the latter that these meditations focus on. Dederer reflects on her attempts to reconcile her feminist principles with her admiration for the films of Roman Polanski, pokes holes in the excuses made for composer Richard Wagner's antisemitism, and suggests that such "geniuses" as Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway received a "special dispensation" from the public to act like monsters: "Maybe we have created the idea of genius to serve our own attraction to badness." Examining the role of the critic, she pushes back on a male writer who told her to judge Woody Allen's Manhattan solely on its aesthetic merits and posits that instead "criticism involves trusting our feelings" about both the art and the artists' crimes. There are no easy answers, but Dederer's candid appraisal of her own relationship with troubling artists and the lucidity with which she explores what it means to love their work open fresh ways of thinking about problematic artists. Contemplative and willing to tackle the hard questions head on, this pulls no punches. (Apr.)Booklist Review
Dederer expands on her viral essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" in this insightful exploration. We reward artists for breaking artistic and social conventions, but we're furious when they break moral conventions. Fans feel torn between being virtuous consumers, boycotting an offending artist out of outrage over the crime and sympathy for the accusers, and being citizens of the art world, appreciating the work despite the artist's biography. 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. "Liberalism," she claims, "wants you to turn your gaze away from the system and focus instead on the importance of your choices." She urges us to resist the self-congratulation of virtue signaling and reminds us that every interaction between artist and fan represents a collision of lives. "I didn't dance to R. Kelly at my wedding reception," she writes, making it easier to boycott his music. But, she concedes, "maybe you did."Kirkus Book Review
What to do when we love the work and hate the life behind it? Starting strong with a riveting chapter on Roman Polanski--genius filmmaker, child rapist, Holocaust survivor, Manson family victim--critic and memoirist Dederer, author of Poser and Love and Trouble, locates the urgency of the question of how to treat the work of "monster" artists and writers in the power of fandom. "When what you like becomes important, becomes defining, becomes an obsession, then an artist's biography has even more clout, more power, than before," writes the author. "You have not just admired, not just consumed the art, you've become it." Dederer's analysis includes both usual and unusual suspects, often with remarkably original angles. In a chapter on Nabokov, Lolita, and Humbert Humbert, the author asks, "why did Nabokov, possessor of one of the most beautiful and supple and just plain funny prose styles in the modern English language, spend so much time and energy on this asshole?" Her answer, a blend of close reading and blind faith, is redemptive. Some of Dederer's monsters are women: those who abandon their children or commit acts of violence. Here, we get possibly the first-ever pairing of Sylvia Plath and Valerie Solanas. With regard to a little-known queer band that was first adored and then cancelled by their young fans, Dederer's daughter's friend admits, "I still listen to them, I still love them. Even after everything." Yes, she thinks, exactly, and from there, the author works up to a blanket permission slip for inconsistency: "You do not need to have a grand unified theory about what to do about Michael Jackson….The way you consume art doesn't make you a bad person, or a good one. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish that." Bringing erudition, emotion, and a down-to-earth style to this pressing problem, Dederer presents her finest work to date. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.