Series: Monsters on Mondays
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Monsters on Mondays: A Thought Exercise
Dederer, Claire. Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?. United Kingdom, Hodder & Stoughton, 2023. I began reading Monsters after it was recommended to me and I was engrossed from the beginning. I don’t normally read non-fiction and this is why: I immediately wanted to respond to Dederer’s ideas, particularly because I’ve already done a lot…
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Monsters on Mondays | Prologue: The Child Rapist
“…the problem of the artist whose work we love and whose morals we loathe.” p. 8 ROMAN POLANSKI Dederer begins her exploration of “art monsters” with Roman Polanski. Polanski, for those unfamiliar, is a critically-acclaimed film director. He is also a convicted sex offender. In 1977, Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 1: Roll Call
WOODY ALLEN Monsters gets really personal for me right away. If you look at my all-time film stats on Letterboxd, you will see that I have viewed more Woody Allen films than those of any other director. I discovered Allen in my late teens upon watching Annie Hall. Movie rental was becoming a thing then…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 2: The Stain
MICHAEL JACKSON “Stain” refers to a situation in which you find out something terrible about someone you admire and then the knowledge seeps down and back into the prior work of the artist. If you stack up napkins or towels and pour a measure of liquid onto the top layer, the liquid will penetrate down…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 3: The Fan
J. K. ROWLING I’ve been thinking about the progression of things this way: biography –> fandom –> cancel culture “An audience member is a consumer of a piece of art; the audience member is not defined by that piece of art.” p 158 I really appreciate the way Claire Dederer writes about fandom and I’ve…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 4: The Critic
In which the author describes how she came to be a critic and her life as a critic: “…I somehow never was able to transcend the sense that I was an audience member, rather than a professional.” p. 198 I struggle with imposter syndrome. Our author, Dederer, was a professional critic when she was very…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 5: The Genius
PABLO PICASSO, ERNEST HEMINGWAY Dederer points out that a certain kind of person is immune to the stain: the genius. “Genius is the name we give our love when we don’t want to argue about it.” p. 217 Men who are geniuses can do what they want; they can not only carry on with bad…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 6: The Anti-Semite, The Racist, and The Problem of Time
RICHARD WAGNER, VIRGINIA WOOLF, WILLA CATHER Two questions: Dederer brings Richard Wagner and his apologists into the conversation. I had no idea before reading this book that Wagner was anti-Semitic. I didn’t know anything about him at all, except that he wrote a lot of operas, including Der Ring des Nibelungen. (I’ve never taken the…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 7: The Anti-Monster
VLADIMIR NABOKOV And so we arrive at Lolita. I read Lolita as a 20something and not since. I have no intention of reading it again, but Claire Dederer’s words ring true: to choose to read Lolita is to choose to engage with something monstrous. For the rest of your life, every time you see the…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 8: The Silencers and the Silenced
CARL ANDRE, ANA MENDIETA Before #metoo, how much of the work of women was lost, stolen, or co-opted by monsters? What about by plain ol’ average men? “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” – Virginia Woolf I really appreciate that Claire Dederer…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 9: Am I a Monster?
“There are many qualities one must possess to be a working writer or artist…But first among equals, when it comes to necessary ingredients, is selfishness.” p. 559 Selfishness = time Selfishness = privacy Selfishness = no interruptions Like our author, I haven’t done any of the things these men are accused of. Unlike the author,…
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Monsters on Mondays | Chapter 10: Abandoning Mothers
DORIS LESSING, JONI MITCHELL In chapter 9, Claire Dederer makes a good and reasonable argument that female “monstrousness” = real or perceived abandonment of kids. “If the male crime is rape, the female crime is the failure to nurture.” p. 609 Exhibit A: Doris Lessing left two children with her husband in Africa and took…