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A review by lizawall
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
a couple times i started writing reviews and then deleted them in case they were too mean!
it was so up the alley of my interests i feel like i should support it but honestly i found it super irritating. maybe i was hypercritical of it because it was too close? like there's something about someone loving the same things that you do in not exactly the same way that is more alienating than someone who has never heard of them? i felt like nelson was too self-congratulatory about liking the jane gallop more than rosalind krauss, like she was too self-congratulatory about not thinking community action center had too many hairy pussies (wtf), like she was too self-congratulatory about her partner's gender identity and too reliant on it to reinforce her own queerness... but also a lot of the critiques i thought of she had anticipated and maybe even addressed. also maybe i was projecting and/or jealous? like especially when she wrote about being eve sedgwick's student i was feeling suspiciously "why her why not me" about it.
i found myself, too, kind of meditating angrily on her face and the expression she typically makes in press photos, which did make me wonder if my perspective was getting kind of warped. and, ugh, i just thought her partner should get out of that relationship! am i an internet troll? i think reactions like "i just hate her face" and "i think her partner should break up with her" are signs of internet trolling more than valid criticisms, but that's where i'm at right now.
overall i just had this feeling like she was a student performing for a good grade (although some people i know said the opposite) and i wanted more rage and more not-giving-a-fuck from her. it was maybe a compliment that i cared so much about where she could have been headed that i was really mad and almost personally let down by the parts i found weak or problematic? i was into the birth part.
(check out the correction on this nytimes piece! : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/books/review/maggie-nelsons-the-argonauts.html i feel like it is indicative of some of the problems with the book, but also, at the same time, i guess there's something to be said for making occasion for the nytimes editors to even think about this kind of thing.)
it was so up the alley of my interests i feel like i should support it but honestly i found it super irritating. maybe i was hypercritical of it because it was too close? like there's something about someone loving the same things that you do in not exactly the same way that is more alienating than someone who has never heard of them? i felt like nelson was too self-congratulatory about liking the jane gallop more than rosalind krauss, like she was too self-congratulatory about not thinking community action center had too many hairy pussies (wtf), like she was too self-congratulatory about her partner's gender identity and too reliant on it to reinforce her own queerness... but also a lot of the critiques i thought of she had anticipated and maybe even addressed. also maybe i was projecting and/or jealous? like especially when she wrote about being eve sedgwick's student i was feeling suspiciously "why her why not me" about it.
i found myself, too, kind of meditating angrily on her face and the expression she typically makes in press photos, which did make me wonder if my perspective was getting kind of warped. and, ugh, i just thought her partner should get out of that relationship! am i an internet troll? i think reactions like "i just hate her face" and "i think her partner should break up with her" are signs of internet trolling more than valid criticisms, but that's where i'm at right now.
overall i just had this feeling like she was a student performing for a good grade (although some people i know said the opposite) and i wanted more rage and more not-giving-a-fuck from her. it was maybe a compliment that i cared so much about where she could have been headed that i was really mad and almost personally let down by the parts i found weak or problematic? i was into the birth part.
(check out the correction on this nytimes piece! : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/books/review/maggie-nelsons-the-argonauts.html i feel like it is indicative of some of the problems with the book, but also, at the same time, i guess there's something to be said for making occasion for the nytimes editors to even think about this kind of thing.)