Many of the pieces in Like Love review visual art. Nelson quotes visual artist Rachel Harrison in the intro and in a later piece, reminding us that “language is forced on art.” Nelson asks whether language is good for art, and I think the answer is that language is good for Nelson’s metabolization of art. But for me these pieces were largely difficult to take in, because it made me just want to go to the gallery, to remove the barrier of language from the art. I don’t think Nelson is writing about art because she thinks she’s adding to it, but rather because she is a writer who loves visual art, and she is compelled to address it. 

Nelson’s writing on visual art shines, however, when she is in conversation with the artists themselves. “The Reenchantment of Carolee Schneemann” takes the reader into the world of artist Carolee Schneemann in a way no review of a static piece of art could. I found an unexpected resonance in this piece on the painter, whose work in the ‘60s and ‘70s agitated many people. She took the form of painting beyond the canvas and onto her nude body, a move that was not received well. She wanted to be known primarily as a formalist and painter, for her gender to be secondary when people engaged with her work. But as Nelson puts it, that “inevitably washes up on the shores of actuality… in which certain image makers can never appear neutrally in the images they create.” This insight about “neutrality” rang true for me. Growing up, simply existing as a female in a male-dominated world gave me a quiet feeling that my gender was a problem. I could never be neutral, and I always had the sense that it would be much easier to be male, which I subconsciously considered to be true neutral. I used to feel that this was a reality as unchangeable as the phases of the moon, but Nelson introduced me to so many female and queer authors and artists in this book that it gave me hope—hope not only for myself, but for everyone, whether or not they identify as society’s dominant gender. As Nelson puts it in her conversation with critic Jacqueline Rose: “I find that people’s dedication to the idea of the queer and heteronormative as opposing forces is so fierce that it’s occasionally difficult to pull people into this idea that everybody deserves the kind of non stultifying internal breathing space of fluidity or instability that is attributed to queers, or to women or whatever. But it’s by no means their province only.” By way of her conversations with individual artists like Schneemann and thinkers like Rose, Nelson reveals a philosophical truth that goes beyond the art world: everybody deserves to be free from the gender norms that plague them.

For me, these transcribed conversations interspersed throughout the book are what stand out in this eclectic essay collection. The conversations include those with Nelson’s friends. These pieces serve as a welcome tonal shift, giving the whole collection more warmth. It’s one thing for an author to get autobiographical in an otherwise impersonal essay (a major strength of Nelson’s), but it’s another thing for other writers or artists to describe the author to the reader, casting them in a new light. The shifting of the gaze onto Nelson from her friends and colleagues is compelling. Poet and personal friend Brian Blanchfield says of Nelson, “Whenever I relish the kind of friend I think of being, I think of you: a deeply understanding, permissive, even fiery advocate with advanced capacity to listen, whose intellect is a joy, who can surrender happily to the absurd, and who can share the playground of language.” Indeed, these qualities come through in Nelson’s writing, but Blanchfield words it best. These conversations with her personal friends put the author in a playful light. We can see the nature of her friendship with artist Wayne Koestenbaum, that they relish each other’s “too-muchness” and can share each other’s “reams of rhetorical flourish,” to borrow Nelson’s phrasing.