Monsters - Supernormal Reads

Paperback

English language

Published 2024 by Hodder & Stoughton.

ISBN:: 978-1-3997-1507-2

View on OpenLibrary

(2 reviews)

1 edition

ralentina reviewed Monsters by Claire Dederer

The bad person c'est moi

4 stars

Content warning Mega spoilers, in as much as non-fiction can be spoiled

What do we do with great art by bad people? Whatever we want/need to do with it, it's basically the answer. And it's a great answer, Claire Dederer got me convinced. In part, I think, because it makes you regret the question. Like, it's there on the cover, designed to make you pick up the book, and it worked for me, seems so topical and wouldn't it be great to know. But the book in fact picks it apart, on at least two fronts. First, what kind of answer do we aspect? A general rule that applies to all circumstances? Or some sort of algorithm that weights the greatness of the art against the badness of the author? A better approach, the only possible approach, argues Dederer, is to look at the question from the perspective of the audience, that is, from our own perspective. It is clear that knowing someone had done something terrible will affect how we receive and enjoy a work of art; there is no need to turn it into a moral choice, when it's really more a special form of consumption. If it still moves you, make you think, entertain you, whatever, watch it, read it, admire it. If it doesn't, move on. In the second part of the book, Dederer shifts the frame, questioning the idea that some people are bad people (and, by implication, some are good). She points out how gendered is the notion of badness: most bad male artists are bad because they battered their partners and/or children, whereas the ultimate bad behaviour by female artists is to abandon their children [I'm simpliyfying here, she does have a whole chapter about racists and antisemites]. She put the spotlights on herself, and the small ways in which she, too, abandon her children (for days at a time, not permanently) to pursue her art. Is it helpful to draw lines - this is the boundary of irredimability?

Maybe at point the argument gets a bit muddled or risks seeming relativist: Dederer starts off describing Polanski's rape of a child, and ends reflecting on her feeling of guilty for shutting the door to enjoy some privacy and concentration, concluding all artists are bad to some degree (again, I'm oversimplifying). But I do buy the fundamental point, that people are people, and all of them do horrible things.

I'm glad I read it.

T.Elise@bookwyrm.social reviewed Monsters by Claire Dederer

A floating, autobiographical, feminist, conceptual, and emotional approach to the issue

4 stars

I picked up this book in a bookstore purely because of my own wrestle and interest in the topic. I came in with a (mistaken) understanding that the book would be a pithy scientific dissection on the practicalities and systems we can put in place to evaluate and respond to certain works of art. I was instead met with Dederer’s floating, autobiographical, feminist, conceptual, and emotional approach to the topic. At first I felt somewhat frustrated that the chapters weren’t ‘getting at’ the issue and what I wanted to know - I wanted an answer. By the end of the book, I felt Dederer’s piercing lens and intent emerge to spite me for my overly simplistic expectation of how one can or ought to respond to art by ‘monsters’. There are, in my view, some flaws to the work in the way she may throw out an assertion toward the …

I picked up this book in a bookstore purely because of my own wrestle and interest in the topic. I came in with a (mistaken) understanding that the book would be a pithy scientific dissection on the practicalities and systems we can put in place to evaluate and respond to certain works of art. I was instead met with Dederer’s floating, autobiographical, feminist, conceptual, and emotional approach to the topic. At first I felt somewhat frustrated that the chapters weren’t ‘getting at’ the issue and what I wanted to know - I wanted an answer. By the end of the book, I felt Dederer’s piercing lens and intent emerge to spite me for my overly simplistic expectation of how one can or ought to respond to art by ‘monsters’. There are, in my view, some flaws to the work in the way she may throw out an assertion toward the end without great dissection. Nevertheless, I found her writing very digestible and pleasant to read. I don’t know if Dederer has me entirely convinced of her conclusion (if one could call it that?) spoiler below, but her meandering analysis and reflective style has certainly provided depth to my understanding of my relationship with great art/science and the monsters behind them. If like me you want an answer to this problem of what we do with art by monsters, I would encourage you to read this, but be prepared to be left with many feelings and thoughts you want to discuss with someone who has also read it! Perhaps a good book club book?

One last thought is that Dederer takes her own experience/lens of the art world she lives in, so for those of us taken by other significant works, sometimes her references and descriptions of art and it’s artist falls a little flat without having her rich understanding of what she is writing about. I had to do some googling at times to add context.

Note: I would give a trigger warning for child sexual assault/ other assault described in some detail in various parts of the book.. particularly the first few pages.

*SPOILER: that our consumption is essentially meaningless