Claire Dederer

What are we to do and think about art we love produced by artists who have done what we abhor? Dederer goes through a number of cases of men who abused sexual partners or raped under age girls. The central figure is the monstrous man, overwhelmingly the most common artist-monster in our culture, but also spends time on the child abandoning mother - the woman's entrée to monstrosity. She examines but does not prescribe in what form the reader should find resolution. The examination of the self as a monster and the monsters we nonetheless love were introduced more than dissected, real issues but tangential rather than central to the relationship to the works of monstrous artists.… (mere)

This is a book I wanted to share with so many girlfriends. She was endearing to me, that "pirate slut of a girl" who was the teenaged author. She writes on p. 120; "The sexual revolution appeared to be really great for everyone. (Until AIDS.) Who's not in favor of sex? Only retrograde fools are against sex. The sexual revolution appeared to be a victimless revolution. Except it sort of...wasn't. Once sex was set free, it ran like a fire and consumed everything in its path, especially girls. Girls found themselves in a new landscape. In this landscape, girls wandered without parental supervision much of the time; and girls were acceptable objects of desire."

Later in her life, now in her fifties: "I put a damper on the scene at the bar simply by showing up. The sun streamed across the pool to the little table where I nursed my martini and looked lonesome, even though I was not especially. Middle-aged women in bars always look lonesome. I was discovering that there's really no dignified way to go to seed as a woman. Even if you feel happy, full to the brim with that mysterious interior majesty that an sometimes come with drinking alone, you don't look replete. You look like a saddo....There was nothing mysterious or alluring or Jeanne Moreau-like about my sadness. I, with my sadness, was lowering the tone. I was a wet blanket on a hot bed."… (mere)