To me, the author is trying to come up with a solution for a mostly non-existent problem: how to reconcile the bad behavior of many great artists with their work. Dederer starts with obvious, 20th century, mostly male culprits: Picasso, Hemingway, Polanski, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen. She asks us how we are to consider the work of these monsters in the light of their profligacy, but in my view there is no conflict (the one exception perhaps being Paul Reubens). The work is the work, and if it's good, it's good. I love Woody Allen films, but I hate his seduction of his partner's daughter. I might get that his creepy attraction to young girls figures into a movie like Manhattan, say, but it doesn't decrease the value of the work for me or make me not want to watch it.

Dederer, a bit disconcertingly, then meanders into the world of women: particularly Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell, and wonders about the decision of these two women to leave their children for their careers. Why men can do the same without receiving the same scorn. How men, until very recently, expected women to care for them while they made their art, but women who wanted to create had to make time outside the responsibilities of homemaking and childrearing. Do we call these women monsters as well?

The writing is good, and the lives of the artists considered are fascinating; but, again, I'm not sure there is an issue here. We're all flawed, some of us worse than others, and a certain percentage of those badly flawed people are artists who create amazing work. There are many less flawed artists who also create amazing work. To ban consideration of art because of moral outrage over nasty behavior on the part of the artist seems hypocritical to me. People are who they are. We don't have to like them, but we can still patronize their businesses, or go to their parties.

Dederer also conflates her own issues with some of the so-called monsters, particularly Lessing and Miles Davis, which I found a bit arrogant and irrelevant to the book. I was not interested in her drinking or parenting problems in the much larger light of the artists she discusses.