“Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma” by Claire Derderer

I first read a review of this book several months ago when it was first published. The whole premise made me excited to get my hands on it, but it was in such high demand that I didn’t manage to read it until recently. In a nutshell, this is a book about monstrous men and what to do with them. Or what to do with the art that they create.

Derderer is a memoirist and honestly it makes a lot of sense for this work. It is deeply personal, she continually asks what “we” should do or feel about these men, but then immediately corrects herself with “sorry I mean I.” As in, what should I do about it? The book opens with her relationship to Polanski’s work and movies, while still being disgusted by what he has done. In her journey to figure out what to do, she decides to write a kind of biography of the audience. How has the audience thought and reacted to these people?

Each chapter talks about a different monster, from Michael Jackson to Woody Allen. One of the most interesting parts is where she talks about monstrous women. As it turns out, women get labelled monstrous for simply abandoning their children. Men do all this and get away with it scot-free (men are monsters for murder or rape or what have you). Throughout all of this, Derderer is talking about her reactions to their art and to finding out about what they have done, and how that creates conflict within her. She talks about how art is how one biography (the artist) meet another biography (the audience) and it is continually defined by this subjective experience.

The ending is deeply moving. I didn’t think that the book would come to any conclusion, but Derderer does manage to wrap it up incredibly well. She talks about her alcoholism, and her realization that she is also, a monster. She is flawed. If she can get a redemption arc through recovery, should we allow for others to redeem themselves as well? The book finally wraps up with her talking to a friend who had a monstrous stepfather. The problem is, he loved him anyways. And that’s the real issue here, we find this art that impacts us deeply, but the person who made it is flawed, and despite that we love it anyways. There is no solution, there is no way to be a correct consumer of art. You can know the biography and chuck it or not, because this is all subjective and in the end comes down to how you respond to loving these people anyways.

This was so well done, I have been talking about it to many friends as I try to parse through the book. Because these monstrous men are everywhere, you cannot be an art fan without hitting at least five of them. And we so rarely see monstrous women talked about either, mostly because women rarely become celebrated artists. It’s a very nuanced discussion that gives space for the reader to dissect their own experiences by anchoring itself in Derderer’s.

I also really appreciated the focus of the work being on the audience. Yes she discusses the lives of these artists but the bulk of it is about what has been written by people about the artists or how she feels about them. As she mentions, that is the issue with cancel culture (if there is a “cancel culture”) is that it puts the focus on these monsters instead of on the people impacted by them. And she mentions that this puts the burden on the consumer to fix the system by not consuming their art or tossing it or whatever, but that doesn’t work either. That won’t eventually fix things or make it go away it just puts the burden in the wrong area.

And in the end, the issue is within ourselves and how we can still love this art and these artists. And there’s nothing wrong with that (unless you’re going around virtue signaling and making others feel bad about it, but that’s my addition here). Derderer’s gone through this whole journey and it comes down to the same place that it was in the beginning: it’s subjective and totally within you. Which ends up not being disappointing because you’ve gone through all of this work and considered all of these different angles and now you can finally feel settled with this conclusion. Anyways, if you think about art I would highly recommend this book, it is so informative and well done, I think I will be digesting it for many years to come.