Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?

· Sceptre · Narrated by Claire Dederer
Audiobook
8 hr 14 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

A passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo, and whether we can separate an artist's work from their biography.

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?

Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and her own behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the listener, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.

(P) 2023 Penguin Audio

About the author

Claire Dederer is the author of Love and Trouble, and the New York Times bestselling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses. A book critic, essayist and reporter, Dederer is a long-time contributor to The New York Times and has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation and New York magazine. She lives near Seattle with her family.

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