Like Love: Essays and Conversations

by Maggie Nelson

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Who hasn’t thought about writing down their favorite conversations with friends and making a book out of it? This is what Maggie Nelson has done, and it’s nothing short of brilliant. The author of Bluets gives us essays and conversations, advice and introspection, spanning decades of her career.

A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists

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 of 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644452813
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	144,085
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Maggie Nelson is the author of several books of prose and poetry including The Red Parts, Bluets, the National Book Critics Circle Award–winner The Argonauts, and On Freedom. She teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

**Book Riot's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 (So Far)" **

“The new book from Nelson, one of the most towering public intellectuals alive today, collects 20 years of her work. . . . Essential reading.”—Sophia M. Stewart, The Millions

“Nelson’s admiration and enthusiasm for her subjects is a palpable driver of joy and delight. . . . A revelatory gathering of beloved art and artists presented with distinctive prose.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A masterful showcase for Nelson’s wide-ranging intellect and critical prowess.” —Publishers Weekly

“Like Love is a personal intellectual genealogy, both a chart of Nelson’s influences, collaborators, and intimate friendships, and a map of her mind at work. . . . Throughout Like Love, Nelson is herself a poet of the question spirit.”—Walton Muyumba, The Boston Globe

“Drawn from nearly 20 years of genre-defying author Maggie Nelson’s work, Like Love offers incisive commentary on topics ranging from music and literature to feminism and queerness to motherhood and love.”—Time's “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”

“This is precisely Nelson’s real magic – from within the well of pop culture, film review, and art essay, rises Nelson’s gift for seeing the right things under the surface of just about anything at all.” —Tom Johnson, West Trade Review

“There are a couple authors and artists out there that I am distinctly grateful to be alive alongside, and Maggie Nelson might be at the top of that list. . . . [Like Love is] a stunning and integral book.”—Julia Hass, Literary Hub's “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”

“Through Maggie Nelson’s powerful prose and expansive reflection on a wide breadth of subject matter, we see one of the most wonderful, poetic minds of this generation detail how she’s come to see the world through a lens of love through friendship with some of the world’s most influential artists and creative thinkers.”—Felicia Reich, Paste Magazine

“Readers can practically watch Nelson’s incisive mind growing and changing as she speaks with colleagues such as Hilton Als and Judith Butler, or as she writes about queerness, motherhood, violence, the lyrics of Prince and the devastating loss of a friend.”—Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times


“By making the problems of the cultural sphere her own, Nelson attempts to live with them without smothering them under the weight of her care. In this way, her criticism is exactly like love.” —Jenny Wu, The Brooklyn Rail

“We have a sense, I think, of the false border sequestering art from theory. And so to remark on Maggie Nelson’s facility in mating the two is to say the least about how she does so—which is with a hurtling gusto that nonetheless invites us to pause and think.”—Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker

“A luminous gathering of dispatches from the delicate adventure of thinking alongside other people. Like Love is a reminder of wow.” —Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar

“Maggie Nelson’s shimmering genius is on full display in this collection. 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 Nelson’s 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.”—Johanna Hedva, author of Your Love Is Not Good and “Sick Woman Theory”

From the Publisher

★ 2023-11-28
An exciting new essay collection from the author of The Argonauts and Bluets.

Poet and critic Nelson draws from nearly 20 years of her career to create this perceptive and lively book. She pulls together conversations, critical essays, cultural criticism, and tributes to the artists she loves, including Björk, Eileen Myles, Carolee Schneemann, Hilton Als, and Judith Butler. Featuring her direct and incisive prose, Nelson’s examination of art and the people who make it is poignant and provocative. Her statement that “the art of our lives may not always be exactly where we presume it to be” is an assertion she demonstrates throughout. In assembly, these essays build a quilt of influences, friends, and loved ones. Nelson’s admiration and enthusiasm for her subjects is a palpable driver of joy and delight. Additionally, the author possesses the ability to provide surprise and enchantment, and the chronological arrangement allows recurring themes to emerge and flow across the essays, creating an effective sense of a larger whole. Among the many topics Nelson explores are motherhood, pleasure, literature, violence, music, queerness, liberation, feminism, transgression, and, of course, love. Throughout the book, the author asks insightful, thought-provoking questions about the nature of art: “What does it really mean for a work of art or a body of work to perform a critique? Can images provide—and do we really want them to provide—‘critique’ in the same way that, say, discursive prose does?” In an essay on Nayland Blake, Nelson asks, “How does someone fully inhabit and model a space of generosity, good witchery, and ‘niceness’ while making decidedly ‘not nice’ work? What is the relationship between grimness and pleasure?” The true delight in this winning collection is tracking the development of various themes across years and topics.

A revelatory gathering of beloved art and artists presented with distinctive prose.

Kirkus Reviews