Your essay appeared in the Paris Review in 2017. Your book came out in 2023. Did your feelings about this subject evolve over that time?
Very much so. At the beginning of writing the book, I had a more punitive perspective about these—mostly—men and their work. But the events of the following five years were a political education for me. By the time I finished the book, I was less interested in blaming individual people and more interested in the structures that are at play in this problem.
Did the research for this book prompt you to stop engaging with the work of any particular artists?
I don’t really listen to Kanye anymore, even though I adore some of his work. He’s like a ghost who haunts this book. I didn’t end up writing about him very much, because his offenses piled up so quickly—I couldn’t keep up.
This is such a timely topic. Looking forward, how do you think your book will age?
My editor and I worked really hard not to focus the book on ultra-contemporary examples. It seemed like her cutoff was Louis C.K.—no one was allowed in the book who was accused after he was. This has been a problem for as long as there have been artists and audiences. It’s simply accelerated and intensified in the internet era.•
MONSTERS: A FAN’S DILEMMA, By Claire Dederer
KNOPF • APRIL 2023 • 288 PAGES • $28 HARDCOVER
What are we to make of art wrought by monsters—predators, racists, misogynists, and other problematic people? Developed from her clear-eyed Paris Review essay on the topic, Claire Dederer’s book asks whether we can fairly evaluate such creations, knowing the offenses of their makers, or whether we must throw out their works. Dederer digs into these questions as she seeks to answer a weightier one: Does all great art come from a monstrous place?
Jessica Blough is a freelance writer. A former associate editor at Alta Journal, Blough is a graduate of Tufts University where she was editor in chief of the Tufts Daily.
