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when and what

The Problem of Love: Reading Art Through Complicity

Or: When Great Art Comes From Terrible People: Questions for Fans

Based on: Claire Dederer, Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?

What do you do when you discover something unforgivable about someone whose work you love?

This is not a rhetorical question. It’s a question that lands differently depending on who you are, what you’ve experienced, and what that art has meant to you. The answer—if there is one—is not the same for everyone. Dederer knows this. She refuses to tell you what to think. Instead, she shows you herself thinking, circling the problem, contradicting herself, starting over.

The book moves through cases you probably know: Polanski, Woody Allen, Picasso, Michael Jackson. But also cases you might not expect: Joni Mitchell, Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing. The monstrousness of men tends to involve assault; the monstrousness of women tends to involve their children. That asymmetry is worth sitting with. So is the fact that we use the word “genius” to excuse behaviour we’d never tolerate from anyone else.

What interests me about this book is that Dederer doesn’t try to solve the problem. She holds it open. She asks whether separating art from artist is even possible—or whether every attempt to do so is already a kind of bad faith. She asks why we need categories like “genius” in the first place, and who those categories serve. She asks what it means that our capacity to consume art made by terrible people might say something about us.

This is a book about complicity. About what happens when the frameworks we use for moral judgment—boycott, cancel, separate the art from the artist—turn out to be inadequate to the mess of actual feeling. About what it might mean to be honest about that inadequacy instead of pretending we’ve resolved it.

We’ll read the book together, sit with its discomfort, and talk about what it opens up.


Week 1 (April 21, Tue 12-2)

Week 2 (April 28, Tue 12-2): Read the book!

Week 3 (May 5, Tue 12-2): Read the book and see the task!

Week 4 (May 12, Tue 12-2): The Stain
What actually changes when you learn the thing? The stain isn’t on the work. It’s on your memory of loving it before you knew.

Week 5 (May 19, Tue 12-2): The Fan
What does loving art do to you — and what do you owe it back? A fan doesn’t consume art. A fan lets art consume part of who they are. That’s why betrayal feels personal.

Week 6 (May 26, Tue 12-2): The Genius
Why does the word “genius” end arguments instead of starting them? “Genius” is not a description. It’s a permission slip — and someone decided who gets to hand them out.

Week 7 (June 2, Tue 12-2): The Problem of Time
Does historical distance dissolve complicity — or just make it comfortable? Wagner’s antisemitism feels different from Polanski’s rape. The only real difference is that one of them is dead.

Week 8 (June 9, Tue 12-2): The Silenced
Who is missing from the conversation about monsters — and what does the silence cost? For every monstrous man who hoovered up the resources, there is a person whose work was never made. We don’t know their names.

Week 9 (June 16, Tue 12-2): The Structural Monster
What happens when the monstrousness isn’t a biography but a system? Polanski is a person you can cancel. An apartheid state is not. But you are still watching the film.

Week 10 (June 23, Tue 12-2): Abandoning Mothers
Why is the female crime always about children — and what does that reveal about who gets to be an art monster? The male monster harms others. The female monster abandons her obligations. The asymmetry tells you everything about what women are for.

Week 11 (June 30, Tue 12-2): Am I a Monster?
What does making art — or consuming it — require you to take from others? Every book is made of small selfishnesses. The question isn’t whether the artist took something. It’s whether what they made was worth what they took — and from whom.

Week 12 (July 7, Tue 12-2): Empathy for the Monster
Can you hold someone accountable and still feel for them — and what does it mean that we want to? Empathy for the monster is not forgiveness. But refusing it entirely might say more about us than about them.

Week 13 (July 14, Tue 12-2): Beauty
When everything else is said — does it matter that the work is beautiful? Beauty is not an argument. It is not a defense. And yet it is the reason you are still here, still watching, still listening, still consuming. We don’t decide about beauty. It happens to us.