Knyga ne tiems, kuriems nerūpi. Knyga tiems, kuriems skauda ir kurie klausia – o ką dabar su ta meile daryti? Ką daryti su meile kūriniui, jei kūrėjas – monstras? Autorė ramiai, empatiškai, išmintingai ir su humoru kalba apie genijus ir menininkus, labai žinomus ir menkiau aptartus, aptardama jų nuodėmes – nuo baisiausių iki tokių, kurias beveik galėtume pražiūrėti ir atleisti. Beveik. Kalba apie pateisinimus, kuriuos tokiems kūrėjams kuriame – ne dėl to, kad patys būtume prievartautojai, antisemitai, moteris mušantys alkoholikai, pedofilai ar žudikai, o todėl, kad menas – ne prekė, kuria vis dar prekiaujama rusijoje. Visokiems saldainiams ir tepamiems sūreliams pakaitalą rasti lengva. O vat kai kalba pasisuka apie kūrinius, kurie pakeitė gyvenimus, kito brand‘o jau nebepasirinksi. Galbūt noras mylėti, net kai problematiška, yra egoistiškas prieš aukas, tačiau labai žmogiškas. Ir man reikėjo šios knygos. Nes nepraeina diena, kai nepagalvoju – o ką man daryt su Rammsteinais? Jie gi šeši. Bet gi visi žinojo, jei vyko prievarta. Užsimerkė. Negirdėjo. Nusisuko. O ką daryti su kūryba, kuri ėjo mano gyvenime koja kojon pastaruosius 15 metų?

This is a heated debate, especially when we find out less than favourable things about somebody whose work we grew up admiring or who shaped us as people. Because art has the power to do this. Claire Dederer is a memoir and essay writer who I had never heard of but she decided to look into this topic once she hit a weird personal wall when struggling to come to terms with the fact that she still is able to absolutely adore Polanski's movies while knowing of and being repulsed by the atrocity he committed. Why? How? Why? So she started thinking and exploring art by what we now like to call "problematic" people and our relationship with that, and then #Metoo happened and suddenly cancel culture for all kind of things was en vogue and she realized her subject of interest had gone viral. So she expanded and wrote this book (and I believe a viral article in between). The same absence shows itself in Dederer’s thoughtful discussion of Annie Hall. She doesn’t really stop to consider who made Annie Hall. She just assumes it is a Woody Allen movie. And why wouldn’t she? But that absence speaks, in my view, to the continuing way that the genius of (usually) women actresses, models, and singers is undervalued in our culture. What are we saying to Diane Keaton when we say that a work of art she obviously put her whole heart and soul into in 1977, a work of art she made great, is ruined because of something Woody Allen did in 1992? This book makes the reader question their own ethics and moralities as the writer questions her own responses and behaviours to a delicate subject matter. This book is half excellent and half terrible. First, it’s a great subject, horrible people who make great art is something that bothers all of us here I think. Claire Dederer asks all the right questions and rounds up all the usual suspects, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Hemingway, Picasso, JK Rowling…. Huh? What’s that you say? The author of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Incorrect Opinions?The tainting of the work is less a question of philosophical decision-making than it is a question of pragmatism, or plain reality. That's why the stain makes such a powerful metaphor: its suddenness, its permanence, and above all its inexorable realness. The stain is simply something that happens. The stain is not a choice. The stain is not a decision we make. Somewhere in the middle of the book, Dederer goes on to target monstrous women, shaming those that abandon their children. This comes off as round-about and personal as we finally understand why Dederer took this path.

In her hands, vexed territory is oddly flattened out, its provocations mere mole hills on the way to nowhere. But in truth, I was more often baffled than bored. Virginia Woolf’s antisemitism (Dederer proudly tells a Jewish friend that she has “rumbled” this) hasn’t been forgotten; Allen Ginsberg isn’t better known than Philip Larkin (or not in Britain, anyway); JK Rowling doesn’t live in England. Monsters is populated with auteurs, with people whose instincts are singular and extreme, but its author’s real predilection seems to be for generalisation. An unwarranted detour into the world of scientists has her trotting out all the cliches about their eccentricity, the tattered garments and rope belts she believes they use to burnish their “genius”. Who can tell Picasso’s abused women apart? Not her, she tells us. They’re a “fleshy pig-pile” and she – well done, sister! – can never remember which is which. Monsters is a lot of things--smart, incisive, insightful, absorbing--but more than anything, it is such an impressively thoughtful book in so many ways.I read Monsters as part of an ill-fated attempt to replace the unsatisfying internet culture writing that I sometimes let clog my mornings with book-length works of criticism. This book in particular because I was worried my own perspective on the question—what to do with great art by horrible men, basically—was in danger of ossifying. I wanted to challenge myself. Alas, Dederer and I basically agree: The chapter on Nabokov is called “The Anti-Monster” because Vlad himself was in no way shape or form a monster but he wrote an appallingly accurate book about Humbert Humbert, the pedophile, leading CD to worry An] insightful exploration . . . Dederer’s case studies include Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Miles Davis, whose work she considers brilliant and important. What’s a fan to do? Dederer offers nuanced answers, challenging the assumption that boycotting is always the best response.” This book highlights the struggle of loving an artist’s work, but not liking the artist, and should we therefore continue to support those artists even though we know what they have done. And if we do choose to continue to support them, how might that affect other people around us and the victims of that particular trauma.

A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read. Dederer holds the moral ambiguity of her subject matter, landing her arguments with precision and flair. It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations.” This books provides an insight into the human psyche, the human condition - regardless of gender identity. But the book becomes personal for her when it comes to her children where it somewhat slips into memoir. This was a choice that took too long to get to, and a choice I don't think particularly fit into the book completely well (and I find this particularly amusing given how Dederer critiques memoirs and explicitly tells us what a memoir is and should be), but, without it, I wouldn't have known about Joni Mitchell or how to review the sixties and feminist violence through Plath and Solanas. Thankfully, the last few chapters tie the pretty bow on how we should go about monstrous artists with Cleage's 𝘔𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴. I mean, I was surprised with the Wagner mention that she didn't mention Leni Riefenstahl. Especially when she glossed over the Allen-apologists for how 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘯 must be looked at for its aesthetics. Riefenstahl was the very queen of aesthetics, a female champion of her time, while also being a nazi. At the same time: “The stain—spreading, creeping, wine-dark, inevitable—is biography’s aftermath. The person does the crime and it’s the work that gets stained” (50). “When someone says we ought to separate the art from the artist, they’re saying: Remove the stain. Let the work be unstained. But that’s not how stains work. We watch the glass fall to the floor; we don’t get to decide whether the wine will spread across the carpet” (45).

Customer reviews

To get things going, Dederer offers up her own monstrousness. She is a mother who is also a writer, which means that she has been guilty of negligence on those occasions when she has accepted invitations for residential fellowships which have taken her away from home for weeks at a time. Worse still, she has hugged herself with relieved glee while doing it. On top of this, she spent 10 years as a functioning alcoholic, which is not something that usually combines well with engaged and committed family life. I was thirteen. I knew Lolita was officially an important book, but it was about a girl my age… I thought I might give Lolita a whirl…