{"id":9318,"date":"2024-04-09T18:57:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=9318"},"modified":"2024-04-09T18:58:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:58:45","slug":"like-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/09\/like-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Like Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Talking About Talking About Art<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A career-spanning collection of Maggie Nelson\u2019s essays on art is punctuated and enlivened with conversations between the author, artists, and friends.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Kathleen Hartsfield Spicer<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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For years now, I\u2019ve been aware of Maggie Nelson, largely as a writer whom my writer friends adore and whom I might, too. So, when I had the opportunity to read and write about her latest essay collection, Like Love<\/em>, I was excited, if a little daunted. The book spans almost twenty years of Nelson\u2019s writing and conversations on art, giving the reader a chance to see her grow and change. It takes its name from a Hilton Als quote: \u201cEvery mouth needs filling: with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love.\u201d Nelson admits this is a confusing quote, because it isn\u2019t clear if \u201clike love\u201d is good or bad. Ultimately, this book is about asking whether the attention one pays to art can be an act of love, or at least a close enough approximation. In almost every essay, she\u2019s writing a review of someone else\u2019s work, taking the reader on a journey from 2006 to 2023 with the likes of Bj\u00f6rk, Judith Butler, Kara Walker, Prince, and more.\u00a0<\/p>

This collection gave me an insight into Maggie Nelson that I don\u2019t think I would have gotten had I begun with her other work. I got to read her insights about other writers and artists as well as witness her conversations with them. My recommended reading list grew exponentially as I learned about new authors through the book. The first example was an early essay, \u201cBeyond All Change,\u201d about the novel 10:04<\/em> by Ben Lerner. In this 2012 essay, Nelson shows the blurring of the lines between the novel’s world and our own (even more so twelve years later). The novel is about an author who has just sold a book for a \u201cstrong six-figure advance,\u201d is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and considers procreating while climate change ravages Manhattan. Despite this bleakness, 10:04<\/em> went onto my reading list immediately because Nelson\u2019s thoughts raise it into a slightly more hopeful light when she says, \u201cOne of the things we can do, for better or worse, is make art\u2026 almost all the art we are creating now will likely appear suffused\u2014if not to say gaslit\u2014by the slow-burning anxiety created by the deepening climate crisis, and the wealth gap that is its intimate companion.\u201d This thinking is shot through the entirety of Like Love<\/em>, and it is the impetus for many of these pieces. For Nelson, \u201cArt is one way we live together in this world, even as it relates and separates us.\u201d Art isn\u2019t a luxury only afforded certain people at special times; it is a lifeblood. Yes, there is reason to worry about the state of the world, and it\u2019s probably even worse than we think, but we have to keep going and making art. It calls to mind the closing lines from Ross Gay\u2019s poem, \u201cCatalog of Unabashed Gratitude\u201d:\u00a0<\/p>

what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Nelson asks whether language is good for art, and I think the answer is that language is good for Nelson\u2019s metabolization of art.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Many of the pieces in Like Love<\/em> review visual art. Nelson quotes visual artist Rachel Harrison in the intro and in a later piece, reminding us that \u201clanguage is forced on art.\u201d Nelson asks whether language is good for art, and I think the answer is that language is good for Nelson\u2019s 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\u2019t think Nelson is writing about art because she thinks she\u2019s adding to it, but rather because she is a writer who loves visual art, and she is compelled to address it.\u00a0<\/p>

Nelson\u2019s writing on visual art shines, however, when she is in conversation with the artists themselves. \u201cThe Reenchantment of Carolee Schneemann\u201d 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 \u201860s and \u201870s 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 \u201cinevitably washes up on the shores of actuality\u2026 in which certain image makers can never appear neutrally in the images they create.\u201d This insight about \u201cneutrality\u201d 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\u2014hope not only for myself, but for everyone, whether or not they identify as society\u2019s dominant gender. As Nelson puts it in her conversation with critic Jacqueline Rose: \u201cI find that people\u2019s dedication to the idea of the queer and heteronormative as opposing forces is so fierce that it\u2019s occasionally difficult to pull people into this idea that everybody <\/em>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\u2019s by no means their province only.\u201d 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.<\/p>

For me, these transcribed conversations interspersed throughout the book are what stand out in this eclectic essay collection. The conversations include those with Nelson\u2019s friends. These pieces serve as a welcome tonal shift, giving the whole collection more warmth. It\u2019s one thing for an author to get autobiographical in an otherwise impersonal essay (a major strength of Nelson\u2019s), but it\u2019s 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, \u201cWhenever 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.\u201d Indeed, these qualities come through in Nelson\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201ctoo-muchness\u201d and can share each other\u2019s \u201creams of rhetorical flourish,\u201d to borrow Nelson\u2019s phrasing.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The closer we get to what and who Nelson loves most, the more compelling her writing is.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Similarly, Nelson\u2019s essays are at their best when they veer into the autobiographical. In \u201cMy Brilliant Friend\u201d (\u00e1 la Elena Ferrante) she discusses her high school friend, Lhasa de Sela, who went on to become a famous singer and died of breast cancer at the age of thirty-seven. That essay is so fascinating because she turns what can seem at first like an essay about knowing a famous person into a caring description of not only her former friend and their relationship, but also of her own teenage and college years. It left me wanting to read more of Nelson\u2018s writing about her own life. Unlike the Ferrante novel for which the essay is titled, the author does not come off as the plain, boring friend. Nelson shows that she has just as many intriguing facets as Lhasa.\u00a0<\/p>

Overall, I\u2019m glad to now be inducted into the world of Maggie Nelson, though I wasn\u2019t a fan of every essay in Like Love<\/em>. The reviews of visual art, divorced from their context of the original time and publication, were hard for me to access. They were often dry and left me feeling that I missed out on a piece rather than was welcomed into experiencing it. They did, however, make me want to attend more gallery shows. Ultimately, for me, the buoys throughout the book were the conversations that Nelson had with her friends and the pieces of essays or reviews where she would let me glimpse more of her own personality and life. The closer we get to what and who Nelson loves most, the more compelling her writing is. But thanks to even the essays I like least, I have a whole new collection of thinkers and artists to seek out thanks to this book. Nelson\u2019s words on Eve Sedgwick\u2019s posthumous The Weather In Proust<\/em> can be applied to Like Love<\/em> as well: \u201cTake the full ride with her, feeling free to take what you need and leave the rest; you won\u2019t be sorry.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Kathleen Hartsfield Spicer<\/strong> is a former coffee professional working in the Nashville tech industry. Lately, she hosts a wine show called JuiceBox and spends as much time as possible in her backyard.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Live Love: Essays and Conversations<\/strong> was published by Graywolf Press on April 2, 2024. Fare Forward<\/em> thanks them for providing an advance copy to our reviewer. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A career-spanning collection of Maggie Nelson\u2019s essays on art is punctuated and enlivened with conversations between the author, artists, and friends. Review by Kathleen Hartsfield 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