"Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?" by Claire Dederer - audiobook review

We listened to most of this audiobook on long Easter bank holiday car journeys to and from Scotland. It was written in the wake of the #MeToo movement and online cancel culture. Dederer pitches it as an autobiography of the audience (meaning her as a subjective consumer of art), covering filmmakers such as Roman Polanski and Woody Allen; the painter Pablo Picasso; writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Raymond Chandler; and the musicians David Bowie and Miles Davis, amongst others. She wrestles with the ethical problem of whether we should still consume the work of monstrous men such as these after we know their problematic behaviours. She argues that biography now comes to find us: it's hard to avoid the knowledge of what Polanski, Allen, and Picasso did, of how they abused women and children, abused their power. I think we've all struggled with this. I still love Woody Allen's films (particularly Manhattan), even though I know of his icky relationships. I was concerned during the book that Dederer was going to either chicken out and not come down on one side or the other; or declare that we should boycott these works. But her conclusion is nuanced and informed by her own "monstrousness" as a mother, a writer, and a recovering alcoholic. As a memoir writer, it's perhaps not surprising that part of this book is a memoir, too. I sometimes wondered if some of that stuff could have been cut, but I think it does add something to her argument. It felt a little long towards the end. And it did turn out to be the result of two long essays being turned into a book.

She embarked on the project wanting to find an authority to tell her what to think and feel about art by problematic men. Unable to find one, she turned inwards to write a descriptive rather than prescriptive book about what this knowledge does to us as consumers of art. I won't spoil her conclusion but it was more satisfying than I thought it might be.

Dederer narrates the audiobook version. We both snickered at her poor pronunciation - particularly of German and French words, but also plenty of English. She is obviously someone who is well read but hasn't spoken some of these words outside of an American academic context. Perhaps a bit unfair of me to laugh, but la-di-da, Michael, la-di-da!