Reviews

The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning by Maggie Nelson

halschrieve's review against another edition

4.0

Maggie Nelson is smart and I like her takes on the Christian and Buddhist literature she analyzes along with popular media in questioning the role cruelty and expressions of cruelty have in the modern Western world. I think she is a smart person. She has good and interesting commentary on reality tv, on horror, advertising, propaganda. I do think her frame of reference limits her analysis.

she’s talking about pornographers and Sade as puritan / the difference between seeing suffering in a Christian way through the lens of redemption and an “atheist” way of seeing suffering people like they are “animals on their way down and so are we” .
Is this actually the divide? Is that what characterizes Christian approaches to suffering really? how on earth does one talk about Kafka and “In The Penal Colony” without thinking about Jewish suffering despite mentioning nazis like eight times? also how do you talk about the import of the suffering and death of a body that is god without touching on say Hindu thought or even thinking about other mythologies ?
where is the caveat !!

kathryn_mcb's review against another edition

I am not focused enough at this time to continue with this. It’s philosophy heavy

bayrayj's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

I usually do not fall in love with non-fiction, but this book is different. Maybe because the author is as talented with poetic prose as she is with essay formatting, but no matter, I love Maggie Nelson and I love this book. As someone who indulges in true crime and “cruel” story telling this reading challenged me to consider why. Why I want to fill myself with that? Why these stories are so popular? What the goals are of the creator? Are they just or successful? I didn’t need to agree with every line to understand the importance of these questions in the world we navigate each day. The issues she brings up are only becoming more descreet. I’m my opinion, this book asks its reader, “do you know what you’re doing?” To which my answer was “no”.
The one issue I had was my difficulty recommending this book to others, as it falls into some of the traps it describes. Many of the references are given in such detail, and brought up so casually thoughts of rape, torture, and murder, that I feel it may be cruel to get friends to read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Rape, Gore, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Misogyny, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Racism, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Sexual violence, Child abuse, Vomit, Excrement, Violence, Toxic relationship, Torture, and Suicide

These content warning happen in the discussion of their validity in connection to the content they were previously included in, not as story telling tools.

circlebeing's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

penofpossibilities's review against another edition

dark informative reflective

3.0

I started listing trigger warnings and then I realised. Its... its all of them

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Misogyny, Gore, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Gun violence, Grief, Suicide, Child death, Blood, Mental illness, Slavery, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Torture, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Sexism, Ableism, Confinement, Death, Body horror, Violence, Rape, Racism, Murder, Sexual violence, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Drug abuse, Self harm, Forced institutionalization, Animal cruelty, and Antisemitism

Moderate: Vomit, War, Infidelity, Addiction, Transphobia, Genocide, Racial slurs, Chronic illness, Dementia, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, and Homophobia

Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic and Mass/school shootings

isabellanevanlinna's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

seventhswan's review against another edition

4.0

There were (expectedly) a lot of graphic descriptions of terrible things in this book, so I got what I went in for and proved Nelson's point at the same time. However, after a while it all got a bit repetitive (maybe also the point?) and there were quite a lot of references I had to look up to understand - I didn't realise this was such an 'academic' text as I'd seen it highly recommended in books that were far less so. Overall, though, really made me think (including about some things I'd rather not)

aclockworkreader_'s review against another edition

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

3.0

nia_abeni's review against another edition

5.0

my life will never be the same… eyes are opened… thoughts flowing… maggie nelson… this book… just means so much to me…

snp46's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5