A review by skrehely
The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning by Maggie Nelson

3.0

"I go down to the bookstore and skim shiny new memoir jacket after shiny new memoir jacket, until my mind starts to blur with blurb-speak testifying to each writer's brutal honesty, which is usually a close cousin of his or her "searing" or "unsentimental" prose, which, to be truly praiseworthy and dazzling, must also somehow shimmer onto the page "without a drop of self-pity." I wander out of the bookstore wondering, Is honesty paired with brutality a more winning, or at least a more marketable, combination? And why has self-pity become the spector to be avoided at all costs, in order to earn artistic seriousness, moral rectitude, and, perhaps, that all-important commodity, readers?"