Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

I appreciated the author’s honesty throughout this book about consuming art made by people who’ve done horrible things, as well as digging into her guilt and complacency in doing so. The question of whether it’s morally good or bad or something in between to consume music, video games, and books is something I often think about myself, so I appreciated getting other perspectives on this issue where there’s not exactly a right answer. I think that some of her examples of celebrities that she named chapters after weren’t really explored as much as they could have been, while others were explored too much, like her practically explaining the whole plot of Lolita for some reason. The Lolita chapter also didn’t feel particularly relevant because it’s purely speculation about whether the author did anything bad or shared traits with the main character he wrote, so I didn’t find this chapter as strong or compelling. I also thought it was a bit weird to paint one of the woman celebrities as a monster just for giving up her baby for adoption…
I didn’t really expect an answer to the question of whether it’s okay to still consume these forms of media because it’s such an individual choice, so I wasn’t upset that she didn’t make a declaration either way. I was really interested in the chapter about Wagner and how harmful it is to say that people were “a product of their time” and that “everyone had those harmful beliefs back then” because it takes pressure off those people and excuses their behavior as being normal in the past. I hear people use this argument all the time, and I almost started to believe them, but I agree with the author in holding people of the past accountable too because there were people who held more progressive beliefs back then, and they chose to not be one of them. Although the book was a bit repetitive at times, I enjoyed the author’s writing and was pretty engaged throughout. I’m definitely going to keep thinking on this subject and be critical of whose content I’m reading/watching/listening to, as well as who I make exceptions for and why.

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larajgriff1's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

Unfortunately my expectations and hopes for this book were vastly different than what I experienced. I wanted a more broad view of how "monstrous" artists affect their fandom and what the group as a whole or individually moves forward. This book is much more personal to the writer and more of a memoir of her life and how she relates to different artists than the effect of their actions on the world.

However, I cannot fault the author for the book not being what I hoped. It is written very well and does make some good points about how these moments and artists affect us. Though in the middle of the book she seems to be "existential crisis-ing" in circles and it doesn't feel like there is momentum again until the last few chapters.

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kchamp's review against another edition

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5.0

Brilliant. Once I got into it I couldn’t help but devour this book. It is uncomfortable and honest and thought-provoking and so, so intelligent.

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jainabee's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

I am so glad this book exists because I NEEDED it. It needed to exist in the world. The question of how to balance fandom of my favorite works of creativity with the toxic and destructive behaviors of the creators is an issue that torments me. Dederer directly addresses some of my own pet monsters; Woody Allen, David Bowie, JK Rowling, Miles Davis. This book makes me think a LOT. This book is very uncomfortable in a vitally important way. This book challenges me in ways I needed. The chapter comparing and contrasting Valerie Solanas and Sylvia Plath (!!!!!) flipped my wig with the brilliance of unexpected insights about how women respond to the violence of misogyny. The chapter about Lolita is a sparkling gem of brilliant insight and analysis that might be the best review of it I've ever read (spoiler alert: Nabokov is not a monster, though he is a genius). This book is FULL of triggering content, as it describes the crimes of the creators. No way around that. The point of the book seems to be to face the monsters directly and feel the extremely uncomfortable dilemma between loving something, even the monster, "even after everything." I got a lot to think about here.

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