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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
I love to think. I love to consider. When you are a girls girl, a cool girl, a lover girl, a cultural girl, a fanatical girl it is easy to feel betrayed. It is easy to feel hurt, to feel like a hypocrite. This book let me think about all of that, made me consider it. I have biographies to consider, art to consider, relationships to consider. I have a whole gamut of feelings about this book.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Good book with lots to make you think about!
challenging
dark
funny
fast-paced
I bought this book as an act of love for myself. It was not what I expected. The personal thread, particularly in what I think of as the ‘third act’ just made it. Because (as Dederer explains) any consumption of art is a two way relationship. I felt I could gulp the message of this book whole.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dnfing because I just can't anymore. Like this book is nothing more than the author constantly trying to find some way to justify wanting to watch movies by a man that raped a 13 year old.
I was actually really interested in this book when I first heard about it, but once I noticed that it was set up more like a memoir about the author's inner thoughts and contradictions (that should have been kept in the drafts if I’m bein real here) instead of a book talking about objective issues with supporting the work of men who act like monsters, like I lost interest real quick.
If there is one thing I vehemently disagree with, it is the concept of separating the art from the artist, specifically when said artist is still living and profiting off of that work, and I thought this book was going to be about how harmful that is. But instead the author just talks about how these people are problematic, but she personally enjoyed their work so they shouldn't have to feel guilty? Oh my god it made my eye twitch.
Not only did the author try to assuage their own guilt constantly, but they also did not express the full affect of what some of these popular figures did exactly and how heinous it is. I wish that this was just supposed to be an essay on a fan's dilemma with problematic figures and parasocial relationships that was just executed poorly, but instead I found it to be very harmful and only serves to desensitize audience members to bigotry found within media.
I was actually really interested in this book when I first heard about it, but once I noticed that it was set up more like a memoir about the author's inner thoughts and contradictions (that should have been kept in the drafts if I’m bein real here) instead of a book talking about objective issues with supporting the work of men who act like monsters, like I lost interest real quick.
If there is one thing I vehemently disagree with, it is the concept of separating the art from the artist, specifically when said artist is still living and profiting off of that work, and I thought this book was going to be about how harmful that is. But instead the author just talks about how these people are problematic, but she personally enjoyed their work so they shouldn't have to feel guilty? Oh my god it made my eye twitch.
Not only did the author try to assuage their own guilt constantly, but they also did not express the full affect of what some of these popular figures did exactly and how heinous it is. I wish that this was just supposed to be an essay on a fan's dilemma with problematic figures and parasocial relationships that was just executed poorly, but instead I found it to be very harmful and only serves to desensitize audience members to bigotry found within media.
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
Can I still like XY and their music after knowing how he's been cheating on their partner and how their personal being is so much different than their artistic one? Can I blame YZ for what they've done 30 years ago while being on alcohol and hard drugs but now one of the loveliest human beings and a great musician? Can I still download that game on sale while the creator of this fantasy world doesn't accepts my existence!?
It started as an interesting read from the get-go. The fact we're way more informed about artists and their whereabouts, their charmes and wrongdoings, than we were ever before. Thanks to the internet and especially social media. And it doesn't remain there, of course the book also touches the surface of how social media creates the idea of parasocial relationships between artists and us - the audience, the consumer - more than ever. I liked the idea of the author to see accusations forward artists we used to enjoy as a stain: we didn't want it there, but we can't unsee it as it's spreading and it's stopping is from enjoying their art as we used to before the stain appeared.
I also really enjoyed her take in the chapter "the critic" as I was able to see my younger self in there: running a music blog back in the day and always doubting myself if I - as a back then young and female read person - was actually in a position to critic art in the first place. To write about it. And I better my mail equivalents had way less of those thoughts.
I like the fact that the author doesn't give us a much craved answer to the question how to deal with these monstreous people and their art, she's not freeing us from the act of going though this process but rather asks the right questions that makes you think for a long while.
In the end, as so often, the world isn't black and white and we have to find our own way of dealing with this questions. Be it with artists or other people in our life.
"That barbarism doesn't need to be something explicit as rape or an assault - it can be simply, the taking of resources. Selfishness. Entitlement. Luck. Whatever you want to call it."
“Am I a monster? The answer, it turned out, was a resounding yes.”
Dederer is many things. A critic. A memoirist. A person who uses Important Words. (Even my dictionary failed to explain one of them. No, I won’t admit what it was.) She’s also funny, extremely smart, curious, interesting, and unafraid.
I thought the book would be simpler. Over 252 pages (the rest is footnotes and sources of quotes) Dederer begins with the examination of simple cases – Polański, Allen, Rowling, Michael Jackson – and questioning our relationship with art vs artist. Is it possible to address both in purely ethical way, when the very role of art is to awaken feelings in us? Man Critics, for whom Dederer has quite a lot of choice words they provided themselves, scoff at her for feeling things about art. A critic is not supposed to be human. Which is one of the topics the author examines. Once humanity is removed from a person, what remains? And – can someone truly be nothing but a monster when they’re human?
There are plot twists, which is not something often found in non-fiction. Dederer doesn’t just take a close look at the #MeToo list of infamy; she stares equally hard in the mirror, and as a memoirist provides answers that not only she, but also I am uncomfortable with. What about being an artist in general, and, as an artist, neglecting the duties relegated to symbolic wife – from social engagements to raising children? (The chapter about mothers leaving their children hits hard.) Once we condemn someone, we can condemn their art as well, cancel Cosby and his ilk and The Cosby Show – as I have written in a review of a very different book, there is no way I could possibly watch The Cosby Show again. But a four-part documentary showed Cosby’s beautiful deeds, selflessness, charitable actions. Does that exonerate him? Is there a proportion of good to bad that allows the judgement to be reversed? Is there an amount of time that can pass since the Bad Things have been done that will end the cancellation? Who decides all this? (Spoiler: you, the reader and consumer of art.)
A quote from the author answers – as in, is her answer – those questions somewhat. “I guess all of this is a long way of saying: monsters are just people. I don’t think I would’ve been able to accept the humanity of monsters if I hadn’t been a drunk and if I hadn’t quit. If I hadn’t been forced, in this way, to acknowledge my own monstrosity.” None of us are made of pure innocence. None of us are nothing but villains. Myself included. What is my own monstrosity? Ah, you’ll have to await my own memoirs to find out. In the meantime, I highly recommend reading Monsters and taking a cold, hard, long look in the mirror. It’s going to be uncomfortable and make you (me) feel lots of things. Just like the best art.
My ratings:
5* = this book changed my life
4* = very good
3* = good
2* = I should have DNFed
1* = actively hostile towards the reader*
Dederer is many things. A critic. A memoirist. A person who uses Important Words. (Even my dictionary failed to explain one of them. No, I won’t admit what it was.) She’s also funny, extremely smart, curious, interesting, and unafraid.
I thought the book would be simpler. Over 252 pages (the rest is footnotes and sources of quotes) Dederer begins with the examination of simple cases – Polański, Allen, Rowling, Michael Jackson – and questioning our relationship with art vs artist. Is it possible to address both in purely ethical way, when the very role of art is to awaken feelings in us? Man Critics, for whom Dederer has quite a lot of choice words they provided themselves, scoff at her for feeling things about art. A critic is not supposed to be human. Which is one of the topics the author examines. Once humanity is removed from a person, what remains? And – can someone truly be nothing but a monster when they’re human?
There are plot twists, which is not something often found in non-fiction. Dederer doesn’t just take a close look at the #MeToo list of infamy; she stares equally hard in the mirror, and as a memoirist provides answers that not only she, but also I am uncomfortable with. What about being an artist in general, and, as an artist, neglecting the duties relegated to symbolic wife – from social engagements to raising children? (The chapter about mothers leaving their children hits hard.) Once we condemn someone, we can condemn their art as well, cancel Cosby and his ilk and The Cosby Show – as I have written in a review of a very different book, there is no way I could possibly watch The Cosby Show again. But a four-part documentary showed Cosby’s beautiful deeds, selflessness, charitable actions. Does that exonerate him? Is there a proportion of good to bad that allows the judgement to be reversed? Is there an amount of time that can pass since the Bad Things have been done that will end the cancellation? Who decides all this? (Spoiler: you, the reader and consumer of art.)
A quote from the author answers – as in, is her answer – those questions somewhat. “I guess all of this is a long way of saying: monsters are just people. I don’t think I would’ve been able to accept the humanity of monsters if I hadn’t been a drunk and if I hadn’t quit. If I hadn’t been forced, in this way, to acknowledge my own monstrosity.” None of us are made of pure innocence. None of us are nothing but villains. Myself included. What is my own monstrosity? Ah, you’ll have to await my own memoirs to find out. In the meantime, I highly recommend reading Monsters and taking a cold, hard, long look in the mirror. It’s going to be uncomfortable and make you (me) feel lots of things. Just like the best art.
My ratings:
5* = this book changed my life
4* = very good
3* = good
2* = I should have DNFed
1* = actively hostile towards the reader*