Argonauts
by Nelson, Maggie
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0993414915
- ISBN 13
- 9780993414916
- Seller
-
Tokyo, Japan
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
US: MacMillan Higher Education, 2018. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting.The spine remains undamaged. An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. It binds an account of Nelson's relationship with her partner and a journey to and through a pregnancy to a rigorous exploration of sexuality, gender, and "family." An insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.
Reviews
On Apr 9 2016, a reader said:
"In Opie's nursing self-portrait, she holds and beholds her son Oliver while he nurses, her Pervert scar still visible, albeit ghosted, across her chest. The ghosted scar offers a rebus of sodomitical maternity: the pervert need not die or even go into hiding per se, but nor is adult sexuality foisted upon the child, made its burden"
The Argonauts is the ninth book by American poet, art critic, lyric essayist and nonfiction author, Maggie Nelson. Described as a memoir, it is more of an opinion piece on LGBTQ+ issues, in particular, transgender and queer. It is told in the first person by Nelson, and addressed to her (fluidly-gendered) "husband", artist, performer and writer Harry Dodge.
Nelson touches on a myriad of topics: gender and identity, motherhood, transgender, queer families, same-sex marriage, writing and death. The opinion pieces contain occasional gems of wisdom, but soon become somewhat preachy, tedious, and boring. Many of the people described have the luxury of indulging in first-world angst, so perhaps this is the intended reader base for this book.
Sometimes the writing is not easily accessible: the concepts are so abstract and high-brow, the sentences so convoluted as to need rereading multiple times; no reader enjoys being made to feel stupid or ignorant. Nelson assumes in the reader familiarity with certain linguists, philosophers, writers, artists, poets, psychoanalysts, and unquestionably a basic knowledge of their works, ideas and concepts would increase the appeal of the book. When she quotes the work of others, her reference appears as a name printed in the margin of the text.
What redeems this work from a lower rating is that Nelson (and sometimes Harry) shares important parts of their lives: their relationship as lovers and their wedding, Harry's steps towards transgender, Nelson's relationship with her stepson, Nelson's stalker, their journey toward parenthood and the birth of their son, Iggy. Harry's account of his mother's passing is quite moving.
Nelson has won the 2015 New York Times Notable Book and the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) for The Argonauts. An unusual memoir.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Infinity Books Japan (JP)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- RWARE0000066579
- Title
- Argonauts
- Author
- Nelson, Maggie
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- ISBN 10
- 0993414915
- ISBN 13
- 9780993414916
- Publisher
- MacMillan Higher Education
- Place of Publication
- US
- Date Published
- 2018
Terms of Sale
Infinity Books Japan
We return books after seven days, if the customer is not 100% happy with our transaction.
About the Seller
Infinity Books Japan
Biblio member since 2006
Tokyo
About Infinity Books Japan
Infinity Books Japan,was founded in the year 2002, we pride ourselves in being there for our customers, we deal in, used, rare, out of print and first editions.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....