Monsters
Categories: Literature & Fiction
In Monsters (2023), critic Claire Dederer asks what to do with the art of people who behaved terribly, from Roman Polanski and Woody Allen to Picasso, Hemingway and Michael Jackson. Dederer examines how biography shapes the way audiences experience art and why it is so hard to stop loving the work of artists who have caused harm. She considers her own failings as a writer and mother, and questions whether ambition itself makes artists monstrous.