Aaron Tracy

Should I hide his books, like the Le Pen photo is hidden in the back of our closet?

I really don't know the answer, but I want to.

I really want to.

For My Heart Podcast, Imagine Entertainment, and Parallax, I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is The Secret World of Roald Dahl.

Episode 8.

On our last episode, Roxane Gay suggested we speak to the author Claire Detterer.

Let's do that now.

Claire has very different feelings from Roxane on the subject of separating the art from the artist.

Claire is a prolific writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vogue, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, you name it.

Her book, Monsters, A Fan's Dilemma, has become something like a definitive text on this giant, controversial issue that we're all grappling with.

It's brave, and it's honest, and it's personal, and it's really funny.

In its rave review, the New York Times wrote, this is a book that looks boldly down the cliff at the roiling waters below and jumps right in, splashes around playfully, isn't afraid to get wet.

I started off by asking Claire to tell us a little bit about Monsters.

I came to write this book, I started it many years ago in 2015 or so, because I'd been thinking and writing a lot about Roman Polanski.

And I started my career as a film critic.

And Polanski is one of my top five filmmakers of all time.

I love his work.

I was researching him for a previous book where I was writing about predation of young girls in the 1970s.

And so Polanski came into that story.

And I, you know, I really began to learn a lot about what had happened in his not even just alleged rape of Samantha Gailey or Samantha Geimer, as she's sometimes known.