Monsters by Claire Dederer

 

This book, by critic Claire Dederer, questions what is the ethical thing to do when we discover that one of our heroes in the arts is discovered to be a monstrous person?  It seems to be an issue that rears its head more and more often lately.  She starts with well known examples such as Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and Miles Davis but the list continues with more recent examples being outed all the time.  Two recent ones that broke my heart were Neil Gaiman and Cormac McCarthy, who I think might be the best American novelist of our time.  Do we try to separate the man from the work?  Do we boycott the work, taking volumes off our shelves or pictures from our walls?

Dederer spends time discussing the fan and how certain works seem to speak to our innermost selves and express what we believe about the world or how we wish the world was.  One example is the way the Harry Potter books took over the teenage universe, showing a world where everyone was included and good ultimately defeats evil.  What to do with those feelings when the creator is shown to act diametrically opposed in his or her personal life?

Then she discusses genius.  We tend to give a pass to those we believe are geniuses such as Picasso or Hemingway or Michael Jackson.  They are full of freedom and energy, ignoring the needs of others in order to create great art.  In a quote from the author, 'The thing is, freedom and energy can become confusing, morally or ethically speaking.  If you are handsomely rewarded for giving in to some of your impulses, doesn't it begin to seem like all of your impulses ought to be honored?  Especially because it's hard to tell the good from the bad.  Why would you quash an impulse, no matter how savage or destructive, when it might be one and the same thing as the impulse that allows you to do this mysterious, free thing everyone says is genius?  What follows logically from there is the idea that the artist ought to be free in all his doings.  Otherwise, if he constrains himself, he might turn off the energy.  He might somehow accidentally sit on the muse and squish it to death.'

Claire Dederer is a critic whose work appears regularly in publications such as the Nation, the New York Times, Vogue and a host of others.  After posing the questions above, she goes into her own life and that of other female artists, questioning why their voice is so often silenced and if it is possible to both be a great artist and a great mother simultaneously.  She also is honest about her own foibles, such as her alcoholism.  While she doesn't answer the question fully, she does suggest as the book ends that we are all full of both good and monstrous impulses and poses another question, should we be judged on our life by the worst thing we have done?

I read the last page of this book knowing that it would stick with me for a long time and that there is so much to think about in the questions posed that I would be mulling over them for quite a while.  In the end, it seems that each person must draw their own line in what they are willing to accept or in what extent they can divorce the artist from his or her work.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers and those sickened by revelations about their heroes.