Livros no varal,ideias no ar.
Livros no varal,Claire Dederer · EUA · @aaknopf
Devemos cancelar artistas que praticaram atos terríveis? É possível separar o autor da obra? Esse livro é a sequência de um artigo de Claire Dederer que viralizou. Ela investiga casos famosos (Polanski, Woody Allen, Picasso, Hemingway) e pondera como a conduta dos autores interfere na avaliação de suas obras. É um livro de memórias; ela escreve em primeira pessoa e relaciona as questões à sua vida. Numa segunda parte, deriva para uma reflexão sobre o tempo necessário para a conclusão das obras e como isso interfere na vida dos artistas. Ela conclui que as monstruosidades dos homens são de cunho sexual, e as das mulheres são o abandono dos filhos. Um ponto que me incomodou foi a afirmação de que vale a pena condenar inocentes se esse for o preço a pagar para ter um ambiente que permita as denúncias. Mas há várias passagens muito interessantes. E a resposta à pergunta? A biografia do autor interfere na nossa avaliação da obra. Mas essa avaliação é subjetiva e está mais próxima de amor do que da razão. Estamos autorizados a consumir a arte que nos encanta.
“As any kind of love, art-love is an intimate experience, and specific to one’s own nature (249)
“You are not responsible for solving this unreconciled contradiction (….). The way you consume art doesn’t make you a bad person or a good one”
p. 242 · uma de 49 frases marcadas neste livro
This, I think, is what happens to so many of us when we consider the work of the monster geniuses – we tell ourselves we’re having ethical thoughts when really what we’re having are moral feelings. We arrange words around these feelings and call them opinionsp. 24
Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the artp. 80
This is what female monstrousness looks like: abandoning the kidsp. 171
Finishers are always monstersp. 172
You are not responsible for solving this unreconciled contradiction (….). The way you consume art doesn’t make you a bad person or a good onep. 242
Beauty matters toop. 244
We’ve all loved terrible people. How do I know this? Because I know people, and people are terriblep. 255
Everyone who has a biography - that is, everyone alive – is either canceled or about to be canceledp. 50
In this construction, obsession has a very specific function: to indicate our special status as the most intense appreciator of this particular thing/work/item. It means I am a fan, a super-fan, an intergalactic fan, I am very defined by this thing, it is my personality, it is me, I am itp. 52
This tension – between what I’ve been through as a woman and the fact that I want to experience the freedom and beauty and grandeur and strangeness of great art – this is at the heart of the matter. It’s not a philosophical query – it’s an emotional onep. 74
We each bring our subjective experience to art and to lovep. 79
It might sound as though I’m conflating two things – male predators and female finishers – in a troubling way. And I am. Because when women do what needs to be done in order to write or make art, we sometimes feel monstrous. And others are quick to describe us that wayp. 173
The ambition and the finishing. These are what make the artist. The artist must be monster enough not just do start the work, but to complete itp. 173
I guess all of this is a long way of saying: monsters are just peoplep. 237
Condemnation of the canceled celebrity affirms the idea that there is some positive celebrity who does not have the stain of the canceled celebrity. The bad celebrity, once again, reinforces the idea of the good celebrity, a thing that doesn’t exist, because celebrities are not agents of morality, they’re reproductible imagesp. 241
We don’t love the deserving: we love flawed and imperfect human beings, in an emotional logic that belongs to an entirely different weathers system than the chilly climate of reasonp. 257
(…) the problem of loving someone who had done such a terrible thing. I wanted to be a virtuous consumer, a demonstrably good feminist, but at the same time I also wanted to be a citizen of the world of art, a person who was the opposite of a philistinep. 4
(…) what ought we to do about great art made by bad men?p. 17
A lot of men didn’t feel great about men. Even the patriarchs were sick of patriarchyp. 33
Something in us – in me – chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills do the drama of loudly denouncing the monster in questionp. 38
The morally correct people against the immoral ones. The process of making someone else wrong so that we may be more rightp. 39
My own life has shown me that a current moment can remake the past anew, can imbue the past with new truthp. 45
Everything is everyone’s business – there’s a market for every piece of information (…)p. 49
When what you like becomes important, becomes defining, becomes an obsession, then an artist’s biography has even more power than beforep. 52
They (we) watch the same movie, read the same book. The frame of reference and the landscape are entirely shared. (…) – and then I get to have my feelings explained to me. There’s a real pleasure and even consolation in thisp. 68
I come as a sympathizer to the accusers. I am the accusers. And yet I still want to consume the art. Because, out in front if all of that, I’m a humanp. 74
What makes great art depends on who we are and what we live through. It depends on our feelingsp. 75
The sex is as important as the paintingp. 95
Are brilliant people more apt to be crazy? Are geniuses more apt to be miserable? Are the really talented also generally mentally unwell?p. 104
This is truly a female monstrousness – the joy of being accepted where others of your kind are not (…). Making yourself the chosen one is a strategy: a bright circle drawn against almost all of the rest of the worldp. 121
This trade-off is depressing and maybe even inhuman – but, to my mind, it’s the bargain that’s on the table right now. Some people endure shaming, deserved or undeserved, so that some other people can say what happened to themp. 132
We shouldn’t punish artists for their subject matterp. 138
(…) it’s an ordinary human story. It’s terrible and unthinkable and appalling and it happens all the time. That makes it fit subject matter for a writerp. 140
Nabokov is in fact a kind of anti-monsterp. 150
The exigencies of motherhood are inexorable. You will be forced into selflessness, once you’ve become a motherp. 162
What the artist or writer or musician needs desperately is time. And what the family needs is timep. 163
All writers struggle to find our way into that blessed place: a room with a door that locks from the inside, against the familyp. 164
The writer alone, in a space with a door that closes against the world: that’s the very picture of happinessp. 165
[Hemingway’s wife] She’s saying if you’re a really awful person, you are driven to greatness in order to compensate the world for all the awful shit you are going to do to itp. 174
If male crime is rape, the female crime is failure to nurture. The abandonment of children is the worst thing a woman can dop. 175
The initial thought of how to take responsibility is to boycott the art – the liberal solution of simply removing one’s money and one’s attention. But does that really make a difference?p. 238
Becoming overly focused on what we do about monstrous men turns attention away from the real work of #MeToop. 240
My reading and compulsive rereading of Carver is shaped by my own experience; my own history, my own geography, my own drunkenness, my own literary aspirations. It is also shaped, for me, by his biographyp. 242
Can we continue to celebrate the genius in the face of the monster?p. 251
[art appreciation] (…) we change, and our relationship to it changesp. 252
How terrible is their terribleness? How much do we love them? And how important is that love to us?p. 255
What do we do about the terrible people in our livres? Mostly we keep loving themp. 250
Families are hard because they are the monsters (and angels, and everything in between) that are foisted upon us. They’re unchosen monstersp. 256
(…) how awful can we be, before people stop loving us?p. 256