Reviews - Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

3.14k reviews for:

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Claire Dederer

3.82 AVERAGE

cereny's review against another edition

4.0

dark informative reflective medium-paced

mo_bookshelves's review against another edition

4.0

challenging reflective

bextatics's review against another edition

5.0

challenging reflective medium-paced

rey_reads's review against another edition

3.75

challenging reflective medium-paced

The contemporary ideal of the genius is a two-headed figure: both master and servant. He presents himself as a master - that’s the first thing you notice about him. […] The master manipulates the material and the audience. The master holds a leash.
The genius dominates, but he has another face, too. He is also a servant. Servant to what? Well, his own genius. His genius is a force that overtakes him, and he is powerless before it and must serve its demands. He’s visited by a force greater than himself, something even more powerful than a muse. This is the job of the modern genius, to create circumstances that are conducive to his free reception of the energies that may rise in him or descend upon him. […] His subservience to something outside of himself is hallowed. In the genius, we call this subservience ‘the artistic impulse’. The impulse has a vast importance; without it he’s just a craftsmen. The artist needs the impulse. He needs to do whatever it takes to keep it flowing.

i thought the discussion of genius & the artistic impulse was really, really interesting. absolutely the highlight of the book for me, and probably the only thread that i’ll pick up and think a lot more about. the power dynamics of genius are so interesting to me and weirdly something i hadn’t given much thought before reading that chapter in Monsters.

i did also enjoy the discussion of fandom and the use of the fan not just as a marketing tool, but as a way of furthering (even unconsciously) the artistic ‘value’ of the work.

also thought Dederer did a really good job of articulating how monstrous artists become a problem for those consuming their work: the description of the artist’s ‘crime’ as a stain spreading both forward & back in time to contaminate their work and ongoing discussion of how consumption of art is the biography of the consumer and artist meeting, so the impact of this stain is not always the same, but modulated by the consumer’s lived experience.

i know other reviewers are uncomfortable at Dederer’s perceived conflation of monstrous men (abusers, rapists, pedophiles) with her sacrificing time with her children for her work, and i do understand why, given the difference in severity of the monstrous act. but i think it was actually a really interesting direction to take, opening the door for a very valuable discussion of motherhood and art-making, and the ultimate Female crime of abandoning your children. what constitutes maternal abandonment? is that still abandonment if a man, especially a male artist, does is? it adds another perspective to the discussion of genius, one touched on earlier in the book, are we willing to accept the “crime” if it enabled great art? what if this enablement was not passive (as in, by spending less time with my children, i have more time to create art) but more active and essential? what if the work is created because the artist abandoned her children /insert monstrous act of choice here - the work is motivated or inspired in some way by this act, as Dederer suggests of joni mitchell. can that add value to the work?
it ties so neatly back into discussion of genius; are we so entranced by the monstrosity of genius that their misdeeds, their biography, improve the work for us? Dederer suggest that we may enjoy living vicariously through someone who dares to commit an act like maternal abandonment that we may contemplate but never perform. but she goes beyond this - do we believe, on some level, that to make truly great art, there must be a level of savagery? whether this is true of art making or not does not affect whether the belief may alter our consumption of art. can, in some cases, the monstrousness of the artist increase the value we feel their work holds? it is an interesting thought.

And yet, only by stepping into the role of a person with these feelings, was he able to write Lolita. Every good artist knows this is true of the best work: it takes some plundering of the self.You go in there and you have a look around and you bring back something that might make people uncomfortable and you write it down. Even if it’s awful, even if people don’t want to hear it, even if it makes you, the artist, seem like a freak- because the great writer trusts that the most terrible feeling is hardly unique. The great writer knows that even the blackest thoughts are ordinary.

i did find the conclusion a little unsatisfying. the book explores many different threads - different types of monster, different ways of interacting with their work, different responses to monstrosity. as a result, the more i read the less clear i felt about the arguments being made, or how the whole book tied together. i was not looking for a single unifying answer about what to do with the art of “bad” people, because i would agree there isn’t one. but i would’ve liked it if the conclusion attempted to more thoroughly wrap up all the topics discussed during the course of the book.

i also feel that the introduction of the broader question (what do we do when we love someone but hate what they have done)

came too late for a satisfying merger between that and the discussion of loving monstrous artists, though it did feel like a good point. also not sure i agree that we can solve nothing through our decisions about what art we consume, but i did find the argument she made (

believing that not consuming art made by bad people enables us to individually contribute to solving a problem is simply buying into capitalism

) interesting.

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