Famous Men, by Julie Buntin: Should Art, and Ourselves, Be Separated from Artist?

In Claire Dederer's whip-smart book, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, she ponders the difficult question about what we as consumers of art should do about the art created by terrible men. Should we always separate art from artist? Sometimes? When? How? If we do separate art from artist and consume the art of terrible men, can we still enjoy the art of these men with "biographical stains"? The answers are not universal and every person must carefully examine these questions for themselves -- often for each individual case (Roman Polanski? Woody Allen? Norman Mailer? Philip Roth? Etc, etc, etc -- there is no shortage of terrible famous men who made/make great art). 

In Julie Buntin's new novel Famous Men, she asks us to go even further; to ponder not just whether we should separate art from artist but whether we should separate ourselves from artists with whom we might have a personal relationship when we know they do deplorable things. 

Famous Men is a novel about nuance -- about sexual power dynamics, #Metoo, and mutually beneficial, symbiotic (transactional?) relationships that maybe aren't as anchored to equal ground as they might seem on the surface. And it's a novel about writing and art and learning to find your way on your own in a brutal world. 

Wilhelmina (Will, to her friends) grows up, fatherless (a key detail), in the small town of Greening, Michigan. The otherwise forgettable town's claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of famous writer Nathaniel Fellow. Will's mother works in the cafeteria of a fancy boarding school Nathaniel attended, and when teenage Will discovers the poetry Nathaniel wrote as a student at the school and evidence of an encounter between her mother and Nathaniel as young people, she becomes deeply interested in learning more. She moves to NYC and she writes and she manages to insinuate herself into Nathaniel's trust and spends the next decades of her life hunting truth -- about her life, about poetry and literature, about friendship. 

It's almost wearisome at this point to complain about the lost art of considering nuance in this hot-take culture. But this novel is a smack-in-the-face wake up call to remember there's always a story, context, and more than meets the eye behind what appears to be a simple issue. 

And my goodness, Julie Buntin is a magnetic writer! This is my first time reading her (her debut Marlena was a bookstore favorite a few years ago, but I never got to it) and I'm mesmerized by her detail and description. But she keeps us quickly moving, too.  

I really, really loved this novel. I picked this up on a whim based on this fantastic interview at the Chicago Review of Books. And it turns out to be a favorite of the year. But I need you to read this too and tell me what you think. I highly recommend you do!