Monsters

November 1, 2022

With Bruno Schulz, the Sami Rohr Prize--winning Balint revisits the celebrated Polish Jewish author/artist, focusing on the rediscovery of murals Schulz was compelled to paint at an SS villa and the question raised when they were smuggled to Jerusalem: who can claim the legacy of those, like Schulz, who perished in the Holocaust? Actor, stand-up comedian, and significant MTV player since its inception, Bellamy talks about quitting his corporate job and smashing race and class barriers as he rose to Top Billin' in the entertainment industry (100,000-copy first printing). An expansion of New York Times best-selling memoirist Dederer's viral Paris Review essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" Monsters considers whether genius gives male artists from Polanski to Picasso the license for malicious behavior and whether male and female monstrosity are the same (35,000-copy first printing). With Honey, Baby, Mine, celebrated actress Dern and her equally celebrated mother Ladd share intimate conversations they've had, sparked by Ladd's illness (500,000-copy first printing). After his divorce, Mississippi novelist Durkee sneaked off to a fishing shack in Vermont and started Stalking Shakespeare, facing down know-it-all curators as he looked for a portrait of the Bard that could verifiably be shown to have been painted from life. A novelist, playwright, and biographer of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, Greenfield takes a long look at multi-Obie-winning playwright, actor, and director Sam Shepard in True West (40,000-copy first printing). An esteemed dance critic who wrote for the Village Voice for over four decades, Jowitt limns the life and works of groundbreaking modern dance choreographer Martha Graham in the smartly named Errand into the Maze; it's the title of one of Graham's best-known pieces (20,000-copy first printing). Prize-winning poet Schoenberger, also author of Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood, does a deep dive into the character of Tennessee Williams's iconic Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire (40,000-copy first printing). In Nothing Stays Put, Wall Street Journal contributor Spiegelman unearths the life of Amy Clampitt, a celebrated poet (and personal favorite) who published her first of five acclaimed collections when she was 63 and went on to win a MacArthur fellowship.

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Starred review from February 13, 2023
What’s a fan to do when they love the art, but hate the artist? asks book critic and essayist Dederer (Love and Trouble) in this nuanced and incisive inquiry. She contends that “consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting,” those of the artist and the audience, and it’s the plight of the latter that these meditations focus on. Dederer reflects on her attempts to reconcile her feminist principles with her admiration for the films of Roman Polanski, pokes holes in the excuses made for composer Richard Wagner’s antisemitism, and suggests that such “geniuses” as Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway received a “special dispensation” from the public to act like monsters: “Maybe we have created the idea of genius to serve our own attraction to badness.” Examining the role of the critic, she pushes back on a male writer who told her to judge Woody Allen’s Manhattan solely on its aesthetic merits and posits that instead “criticism involves trusting our feelings” about both the art and the artists’ crimes. There are no easy answers, but Dederer’s candid appraisal of her own relationship with troubling artists and the lucidity with which she explores what it means to love their work open fresh ways of thinking about problematic artists. Contemplative and willing to tackle the hard questions head on, this pulls no punches.

March 1, 2023
Dederer expands on her viral essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" in this insightful exploration. We reward artists for breaking artistic and social conventions, but we're furious when they break moral conventions. Fans feel torn between being virtuous consumers, boycotting an offending artist out of outrage over the crime and sympathy for the accusers, and being citizens of the art world, appreciating the work despite the artist's biography. Dederer's case studies include Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Miles Davis, whose work she considers brilliant and important. What's a fan to do? Dederer offers nuanced answers, challenging the assumption that boycotting is always the best response. ""Liberalism," she claims, "wants you to turn your gaze away from the system and focus instead on the importance of your choices." She urges us to resist the self-congratulation of virtue signaling and reminds us that every interaction between artist and fan represents a collision of lives. "I didn't dance to R. Kelly at my wedding reception," she writes, making it easier to boycott his music. But, she concedes, "maybe you did."

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March 1, 2023

Building on her Paris Review essay "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?," Dederer (Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning) tackles that question and a host of others entangled with it. For example, she asks who decides what counts as a genius. And how does society decide which "problematic" artists people can and cannot still love? While often-debated figures such as Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are mentioned in the book's inquiries, the other subjects range across history and gender as well. That includes composer Richard Wagner, known for his antisemitism, and novelist Doris Lessing, who was said to have abandoned her first two children and her marriage to write. Emerging from Dederer's reflections is the plain truth that every personal response to art is inseparable not only from the artist's past but also the history of each member of its audience. VERDICT By turns emotional and measured, this is a valuable meditation on some of the era's most urgent cultural questions.--Kathleen McCallister

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
What to do when we love the work and hate the life behind it? Starting strong with a riveting chapter on Roman Polanski--genius filmmaker, child rapist, Holocaust survivor, Manson family victim--critic and memoirist Dederer, author of Poser and Love and Trouble, locates the urgency of the question of how to treat the work of "monster" artists and writers in the power of fandom. "When what you like becomes important, becomes defining, becomes an obsession, then an artist's biography has even more clout, more power, than before," writes the author. "You have not just admired, not just consumed the art, you've become it." Dederer's analysis includes both usual and unusual suspects, often with remarkably original angles. In a chapter on Nabokov, Lolita, and Humbert Humbert, the author asks, "why did Nabokov, possessor of one of the most beautiful and supple and just plain funny prose styles in the modern English language, spend so much time and energy on this asshole?" Her answer, a blend of close reading and blind faith, is redemptive. Some of Dederer's monsters are women: those who abandon their children or commit acts of violence. Here, we get possibly the first-ever pairing of Sylvia Plath and Valerie Solanas. With regard to a little-known queer band that was first adored and then cancelled by their young fans, Dederer's daughter's friend admits, "I still listen to them, I still love them. Even after everything." Yes, she thinks, exactly, and from there, the author works up to a blanket permission slip for inconsistency: "You do not need to have a grand unified theory about what to do about Michael Jackson....The way you consume art doesn't make you a bad person, or a good one. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish that." Bringing erudition, emotion, and a down-to-earth style to this pressing problem, Dederer presents her finest work to date.

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