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Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
Non-Fiction Forum
Hosted by:
Peter Lamell
Nicola Burgess
November 13, 2023 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
FreeA 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? Shouldwe love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it?
Claire Dederer, in Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (Sceptre; April 2023) explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.
Read the book, come with an open mind, hear differing perspectives and uncover what your fellow readers think.
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