The Notes Session, Episode 4: MONSTERS, Part 1 | "The Stain"

We couldn’t release a book called Monsters on any day but Halloween. This is the first of three parts on Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, the best answer we’ve read to a question we think every opera lover eventually gets asked: how do you justify liking the beautiful things made by monstrous people, and do you even need to?

In Part 1 of this three-part series, we walk through the structure Dederer builds in her first fifty pages. Stop asking about the monster and ask about the audience. Admit that your reaction is a moral feeling, not an ethical argument. Accept that the stain doesn’t wash out: “separate the art from the artist” isn’t wrong, it’s impossible. And then, the release: how you consume art doesn’t make you a good person or a bad one. Along the way: Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Wagner, a confession about David Foster Wallace, and the extra step we think performers owe that audiences don’t.

Part 2 ("The Fan and the Critic") comes in November, followed by Part 3 ("The Maestro as a Product of His Time") in December.

Content note: this episode discusses the sexual abuse of a child, as described in Dederer's text.

We'd love for you to read along with us. Find the book at your library or here on ⁠bookshop.org⁠. (Amazon is not TNS-approved.)