Love Ruins Everything: On Claire Dederer’s ‘Monsters’

“There is no longer any escaping biography,” writes Claire Dederer in her brilliant new book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, out today. “Biography used to be something you sought out, yearned for, actively pursued. Now it falls on your head all day long.” There was a time when learning about the private lives of public figures took effort. What little information you could get your hands on—magazine interviews and profiles, memoirs and biographies, liner notes and museum labels—was mediated by a third party. Today, you can access every detail of an artist’s biography—their schooling, career, awards, personal life (the only thing you care about anyway)—while watching their movies or listening to their music. The search for information is easy, instantaneous, and reliably yields results; every day you can learn something you didn’t know you didn’t know. What’s more, public figures are more willing and able than ever to volunteer information about their lives, unmediated by handlers or publicists or studios.