Review of MONSTERS
smart, honest voyage through a rogues gallery of genius ...
One of the most interesting and intentionally provocative books I have ever read, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer is simply brilliant. I feel many of the reviews (all glowing) missed the depth and complexity of her work. This is a literary/cultural criticism tour de force that I suspect many literary critics either missed or, more likely, envied and, thereby, withheld the level of praise it deserves. It is a book filled with spinning plates. She is a critic, a feminist, an intellectual, a memoirist and a patient all at once. While the cover is a turn-off and the length is deceptively short, in a series of thematically interwoven essays, Dederer unpacks with unsparing honesty her “fan dilemma”. The dilemma opens with her explicit descriptions of Roman Polanski’s drug induced anal rape of a thirteen-year-old girl and Claire’s continuing abhorrence of the man and the act and the fact that she cannot stop watching his films. Dederer will continue to reproduce in different contexts, with varying degrees of outrage, this “fan dilemma” in pieces on predictable white males like Woody Allen, Picasso, and Hemingway. However, to her credit, she will also bravely step into the comparatively untouched but still troubled worlds of Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell, Virginia Woolf, and Miles Davis. Dozens of individuals who, despite or because of their greater or lesser “monstrosities”, have shaped our artistic culture over the
past 150 years are put through the Dederer x-ray. Each time she travels with them thus blending memoir and artistic criticism brilliantly. While a chapter or two may seem less relevant and the men certainly overshadow the women on the monster spectrum, her honest and eloquent presence throughout presents a coherent though utterly unresolved portrait of the “dilemma” that exists for any thoughtful fan of genius. Her originality is most evident in her stunning chapter on Nabokov and Lolita – an essay I experienced in much the same way Didion affected me when I first read her so many years ago. This NOT a pretentious book. This book is NOT a pedantic slam. Dederer is a memoirist first and it makes all the difference. After reading this book, Claire is now on my dream dinner table guest list.
Monsters
A Fan’s Dilemma
Claire Dederer
2023 314 pages