Bill:
The upgrade to Monterrey went smoothly on my M1 Mac Mini.
There was an update to Safari at the same time as the Monterrey release, as well as, several other updates, I believe there were 4 updates that coincided with the Monterrey update. Perhaps the difficulty with your system is related to all the updates occurring at the same time.
Check your Mac to see if there are any outstanding updates for your system. This, is the only thing I can think of that might help.
Good luck,
Bernie, AF9US