Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic, and nonfiction author of books such as The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, and Jane: A Murder. She teaches in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts and lives in Los Angeles, California.
A New York Times Book Review "100 Best Books of the 21st
Century"
A Los Angeles Times "30 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 30
Years"
"The Argonauts revolutionized the way queer family-making is
written about, talked about and comprehended."--Michelle Tea, Los
Angeles Times "[Nelson's] book-part memoir, part critical inquiry
touching on desire, love, and family-is a superb exploration of the
risk and the excitement of change. Thinking and feeling are, for
Nelson, mutually necessary processes; the result is an exceptional
portrait both of a romantic partnership and of the collaboration
between Nelson's mind and heart."--The New Yorker "Maggie Nelson
slays entrenched notions of gender, marriage, and sexuality with
lyricism, intellectual brass, and soul-ringing honesty in The
Argonauts."--Vanity Fair "Reading Maggie Nelson is like watching a
high-wire act. Her books are inspiring. . . . Because of her
dazzling sentences, I will read whatever the daredevil writes. She
cozies up to ideas unlike any other American writer."--The Boston
Globe "Maggie Nelson has proven her brilliance-a special blend of
poeticism and philosophy, of theorizing and prose-weaving-in her
eight previous nonfiction releases. But in The Argonauts, the
gifted critic and scholar breaks generic ground with her work of
'auto theory, ' which offers a glimpse into the writer's mind,
body, and home. . . . The Argonauts is a must-read."--Bustle "So
much writing about motherhood makes the world seem smaller after
the child arrives, more circumscribed, as if in tacit fealty to the
larger cultural assumptions about moms and domesticity; Nelson's
book does the opposite"--The New York Times Book Review "Maggie
Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America
today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her
generation."--Olivia Laing, The Guardian
"In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson turns 'making the personal public'
into a romantic, intellectual wet dream. A gorgeous book,
inventive, fearless, and full of heart."--Kim Gordon "[Nelson's] is
a radicalism that looks like the future of common sense. . . . A
singular book."--Vulture "A loose yet intricate tapestry of memoir,
art criticism and gently polemic. . . . It's a book about using the
writings of smart, even difficult writers to help us find clarity
and precision in our intimate lives, and it's a book about the no
less intimate pleasures of the life of the mind. . . . The
Argonauts is a magnificent achievement of thought, care and
art."--Los Angeles Times "Nelson's writing is fluid-to read her
story is to drift dreamily among her thoughts. . . . She
masterfully analyzes the way we talk about sex and
gender."--Huffington Post "Nelson's vibrant, probing and, most of
all, outstanding book is also a philosophical look at motherhood,
transitioning, partnership, parenting, and family-an examination of
the restrictive way we've approached these terms in the past and
the ongoing struggle to arrive at more inclusive and expansive
definitions for them."--National Public Radio "Brilliant like
nothing else you've ever read, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is as
hard to pin down as it is stunning. In sharp, intense bursts of
language, Nelson melds critical theory with her most personal
musings, as she navigates falling in lust and love, explores
gender, sexuality, and motherhood, and builds a family with artist
Harry Dodge. Although slim, The Argonauts contains worlds of
thought and feeling, challenging our assumptions and moving our
hearts. This book is the first must-read of the summer."--BuzzFeed
"In a culture still too quick to ask people to pick a side-to be
male or female, to be an assimilationist or a revolutionary, to be
totally straight or totally gay, totally hetero- or totally
homo-normative-Nelson's book is a beautiful, passionate and
shatteringly intelligent meditation on what it means not to accept
binaries but to improvise an individual life that says, without
fear, yes, and."--Chicago Tribune "Reading Nelson is like sweeping
the leaves out of your mental driveway: by the end of one of her
books, you have a better understanding of how the world works...The
result is one of the most intelligent, generous, and moving books
of the year."--Publishers Weekly, "Best Summer Books 2015" "The
Argonauts finds Nelson at her most vulnerable, arguing for a
radical rethinking of the terms in which we express love."--The
Paris Review, "Staff Picks" "What a dazzlingly generous, gloriously
unpredictable book! Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be
real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is
liberating. She invites us to 'pay homage to the transitive' and
enjoy 'a becoming in which one never becomes.' Reading The
Argonauts made me happier and freer."--Eula Biss "Maggie Nelson
cuts through our culture's prefabricated structures of thought and
feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the
service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The
scare quotes burn off like fog."--Ben Lerner "There isn't another
critic alive like Maggie Nelson-who writes with such passion,
clarity, explicitness, fluidity, playfulness, and generosity that
she redefines what thinking can do today."--Wayne Koestenbaum "Once
again, Maggie Nelson has created awe-inspiring work, one that
smartly calls bullshit on the places culture--radical subcultures
included--stigmatize and misunderstand both maternity and queer
family-making. With a fiercely vulnerable intelligence, Nelson
leaves no area un-investigated, including her own heart. I know of
no other book like this, and I know how crucially the culture needs
it."--Michelle Tea
"One of the greatest books I've ever read."--Annie Sprinkle
"Reading Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts helped me to feel some
things I've long thought about but hardly been able to express
regarding the socialization of the maternal function, which is the
dispersed, dispersive essence of the futurity we present to one
another until one is not another anymore. There's the violence I
commit in making a claim for that futurity, and the violence I
endure when that claim is granted. There's the exhaustive sharing
that takes form as writing. There's the 'orgy of specificity' when
the inexpressible is held and released in each expression 'cause I
just want to sing your name even when I don't want to sing your
name. There's the love story buried in every 'I love you, ' and in
every 'I love you' there's a contract for destruction and
rebuilding. There's The Argonauts, which is one of the greatest
books I've ever read."--Fred Moten "In the 17th century a book like
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts might have been called an anatomy, by
which I mean it's a learned, quirky, open-hearted, often beautiful
naming-of-parts. The anatomy never forgets the fragile embodied
world-its carnality or its finitude. And such is The Argonauts: a
memoir (debriefing, really) at once raw, pensive, exhilarating,
sad, funny, and embodied in the same profound way."--Terry Castle
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