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A review by tylerthedictator
Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People? by Claire Dederer
3.0
3.25/5 actually
this is a decent book, however i would argue - along some other reviews - that it is advertised wrongly even by the author herself. she speaks in great lengths of the "i" turning into a "we" - it says so on the cover, too. however this isn't a "we" book, this is an "i" ("her") discovery. she tries to find a way to deal/cope with loving art by bad artists. this is not only apparent in the language the author uses throughout the book (again, i came across the "we"/"i" often enough - it got tideous, as if she had to convince herself that the usage of "we" is legitimized when repeated often enough) but also by the representatives she chose of "bad people."
as another review pointed out, the author assumes you know. the "bad acts" done by "bad people" are not at the center of this book. neither is their art, mind you. i found this to be especially true when reaching the chapters that asked "am i/are women monsters for leaving their children?" it is here where i find her true questions being asked and where her discovery journey needed to take place. these chapters are deeply vulnerable and - her being a memoirist, as she calls herself - make the most sense for the format of the book.
my favorite chapter given how the book was initially advertised is her analysis of nabokov and "lolita."
while i understand that "monsters: what do i, claire dederer, an author, do with what i deem to be great art by bad people that i chose for this?" is not a great title, it would have been true-r to the nature of the book.
if anything, this book has proven to me again that, as art being deeply personal and subjective, you cannot expect someone else - for all that matter a random author - to tell you (me) how to (not) separate the art from the artist.
this is a decent book, however i would argue - along some other reviews - that it is advertised wrongly even by the author herself. she speaks in great lengths of the "i" turning into a "we" - it says so on the cover, too. however this isn't a "we" book, this is an "i" ("her") discovery. she tries to find a way to deal/cope with loving art by bad artists. this is not only apparent in the language the author uses throughout the book (again, i came across the "we"/"i" often enough - it got tideous, as if she had to convince herself that the usage of "we" is legitimized when repeated often enough) but also by the representatives she chose of "bad people."
as another review pointed out, the author assumes you know. the "bad acts" done by "bad people" are not at the center of this book. neither is their art, mind you. i found this to be especially true when reaching the chapters that asked "am i/are women monsters for leaving their children?" it is here where i find her true questions being asked and where her discovery journey needed to take place. these chapters are deeply vulnerable and - her being a memoirist, as she calls herself - make the most sense for the format of the book.
my favorite chapter given how the book was initially advertised is her analysis of nabokov and "lolita."
while i understand that "monsters: what do i, claire dederer, an author, do with what i deem to be great art by bad people that i chose for this?" is not a great title, it would have been true-r to the nature of the book.
if anything, this book has proven to me again that, as art being deeply personal and subjective, you cannot expect someone else - for all that matter a random author - to tell you (me) how to (not) separate the art from the artist.