A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER A timely passionate provocative
blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture
and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic
and contemporary artists but dislike the artist?A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times
NPR The Washington Post The New Yorker Vulture Elle Esquire Kirkus A lively personal
exploration of how one might think about the art of those who do bad things Vanity Fair
Monsters leaves us with Dederer s passionate commitment to the artists whose work most matters
to her and a framework to address these questions about the artists who matter most to us. The
Washington Post [Dederer] breaks new ground making a complex cultural conversation feel brand
new. Ada Calhoun author of Also a Poet From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser
and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble Monsters is part memoir part treatise and all
treat (The New York Times). This unflinching deeply personal book expands on Claire Dederer s
instantly viral Paris Review essay What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Can we love
the work of artists such as Hemingway Sylvia Plath Miles Davis Polanski or Picasso? Should
we? Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia
Woolf asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally
undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an
artist is also a mother does one identity inexorably and fatally interrupt the other? In a
more troubling vein she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create
something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict
the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the
abyss? Highly topical morally wise honest to the core Monsters is certain to incite a
conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
