I wished someone would invent an online calculator – the user would enter the name of an artist, whereupon the calculator would assess the heinousness of the crime versus the greatness of the art and spit out a verdict.
A calculator is laughable, unthinkable. Yet our moral sense must be made to come into balance with our art-love. I wanted there to be a universal balance, a universal answer.
― Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
CBR16Bingo: Bananas
We are living in an age where all of the world’s information, true and untrue, either in summary or in luminous and lurid detail, is available with a few keystrokes. We can learn the details of the ancestors of our favorite musicians or authors if we like. We have the ability to gather all of the facts and all of the anecdotes and build a detailed image of the artist we admire or revile.
But how much do we truly want to know? How much information do we need before we are pushed beyond admiration and into a very uncomfortable place?
Claire Dederer attempts to do this. To look at the famous artists and hold them up against their histories. She asks the question, “Even though we know what they have done, can we still love them? And if we can, should we?”
With the exception of a handful of well-known celebrities, if you dig deep enough into someone’s past, you are going to find things you didn’t want to know. Some are criminal. Some are truly unforgivable. Does that mean that we can no longer enjoy their art? For many of us, this is exactly what it means. There is no enjoyment because the act, or acts, stains the entire portfolio of work.
As a topic, this is fascinating. As a book, it contained too much filler for my liking. I appreciate that the author provided personal details that explained her interest in specific artists. This context was crucial to understand how she approached her subjects. It did, however, drag quite a bit in the second half of the book. There are a few excellent, excellent chapters that made this book worth reading. However, if you do read it, do not feel bad if you skip over entire sections regarding artists you don’t know or care about.
For this year’s CBR16 Book Bingo Reading Challenge I’m choosing albums from the 1970s that helped raise me. When I think of Bananas, I think of times when everything is going crazy and you cling to something for comfort, something that is familiar, even if it is stained by the crimes of its creator. This feeling reminds me of the lyrics to American Pie by Don McLean (1971).
