Like Love: Essays and Conversations

(Hardback)

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'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' Olivia Laing Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson's brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson's passion for dialogue and dissent. The range of subjects is wide - from Prince to Carolee Schneemann to Matthew Barney to Lhasa de Sela to Kara Walker - but certain themes recur- intergenerational exchange; love and friendship; feminist and queer issues, especially as they shift over time; subversion, transgression and perversity; the roles of the critic and language in relation to visual and performance arts; forces that feed or impede certain bodies and creators; and the fruits and follies of a life spent devoted to making. Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts. As such, it is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson's own development and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.

Reviews

Maggie Nelson's shimmering genius is on full display in this collection. Like Love not only spans the breadth of her generous and supple thinking but also highlights the steadfast consistency of her principles, which seek to elucidate the aesthetic, moral and political conditions that could expand our notion of human coexistence. I'm grateful for her theories that always bring light to the murk, that hold and think through opposing arguments to find the meridian points between. Like Love is a celebration of friendship and outlaw communities of artists and writers that demonstrates how we can hold onto love as we hurtle uncertainly into the future -- Cathy Park Hong
Like Love is a convergence of the most incandescent parts of Maggie Nelsons inimitable craft: there is her ceaseless curiosity, her capacity not only to hold complexity but to court it with equal parts desire and critique, the generosity and gratitude of her thinking held by gorgeous turns of phrase. I have always wanted to be brought along with her, to participate in the conversation, to hang out, to get ruminative and lucubratory, to spend time with the cool people she's spending time with, to get lost, to get found, then to get lost again. Like Love is that invitation -- Johanna Hedva
Maggie Nelsons shimmering genius is on full display in this collection. Like Love not only spans the breadth of her generous and supple thinking but also highlights the steadfast consistency of her principles, which seek to elucidate the aesthetic, moral and political conditions that could expand our notion of human coexistence. I'm grateful for her theories that always bring light to the murk, that hold and think through opposing arguments to find the meridian points between. Like Love is a celebration of friendship and outlaw communities of artists and writers that demonstrates how we can hold onto love as we hurtle uncertainly into the future. -- Cathy Park Hong

Author Bio

Maggie Nelson is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including the New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, and most recently in the UK, Bluets. She teaches at University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.