The Argonauts

Even swaddled in turgid academic jargon, a tedious childbirth story is still a tedious childbirth story, and a “fluidly gendered” love story is still just a bourgeois romance. Citing all the equally jargon-loving academics and writers that you know or cribbed from doesn’t make you look smarter, just more derivative. Memoir need not devolve, as this one does, into mind-numbing solipsism—coincidentally, I was reading “The Beautiful Struggle” at the same time as I read “The Argonauts,” and Nelson would do well to take a lesson from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s stunningly beautiful and original use of language, and the way he uses his story to expand the reader's understanding of the larger context of his life.

Book: The Argonauts
Author: Maggie Nelson
Rating 3 Out of 5 Stars

This is probably my least favourite of the Our Shared Shelf books that I have read so far. While I did find it to be an interesting read, I just didn't really gain anything from this one.

My biggest problem with the book was the set up. I found it to be very difficult to follow and very random. Granted the Caitlin Moran book we read earlier was kind of like that, but it just really didn't work for Maggie like it did for Caitlin. I just found that the jumping area from subject to subject, mostly while on the same page, was just too much. I really had a lot of trouble with keeping the different subjects straight. It also felt very repetitive in many places, which I think in part was the quotes. The quotes, to me, was another set up problem. They really did not add anything to Maggie's voice. They actually took a lot away from her.

Yes, this was a deep memoir and it did tackle a lot of things, ranging from the birth of a child to transitioning. However, I really did not find it all that moving. There was no deep thinking and I just did not gain any new insights. I felt like Maggie was trying to express all this by appealing to the emotions, but she just came up short. Again, this was the set up of the book. Had she just focused on one thing at a time, I really do feel like I would have gotten more out of this one.

Another problem was the fact that it seemed like Maggie was trying to write about things that were above her. It seemed like she was trying to come off as more as an academic than as a real person. There was just something about her that would not allow a connection to form like the one I got with Alice Walker, Caitlin Moran, and Gloria Steinem. She just felt so untouchable.

One thing that really bothered me was her reaction to finding out that her baby was a boy. I just hated how she went on and on about the things that she never could do with her son. And here I thought we were trying to be equal....

I guess my biggest issue with this one was Maggie is trying to cover some really intense things, but only hits the surface. It's like she's trying to put too much in such a short work and not lose anything. Well, I'm not going to lie: there was more than one place where I was lost with this one. It's like she expects you to get her point without really ever explaining it. The quotes, um, no, they really don't help your case.

Oh well, I guess it's on to the next book. I just realized that my last two book reviews have been kind of harsh, maybe the next one will be a lot better.

What a beautifully artistic book. Here Maggie Nelson weaves together academic texts on gender, the personal narrative of her life, and the open-ended possibility of unknown.

The format of the book is very stream of consciousness with academic attributions and non-linear passage of time. At first, the nontraditional format can be jarring, but the story itself shines much clearer halfway through--culminating in a beautiful ending. Above all, Nelson teaches us that gender and love can become so tangled, that we are the product of our mothers and fathers beforehand, and that it is on us to build the tentative future of tomorrow.

This book totally reformed the essay format. It's difficult to think personal essay or lyric essay without thinking Maggie Nelson. And while she's been writing in this form for a while, this was the book that went viral, that broke through every genre wall and was reviewed in every major publication. Maggie Nelson is an institution.

I deducted one star because of some very troubling moments of white feminism. The one that truly made me cringe is when she and her husband name their child a Native American name, because their of color nurse "gave them permission." Yikes.

In the first chapter of this text, the writer describes a sexual encounter with her partner where he declares she is just a hole. I'm sorry to say that her vapid, pseudo Butlerian, over-sentimental prose seconds this assertion. Scratch the surface of her portentous descriptions of Love and you realize that, like Los Angeles, there is no "there" there. Even worse, at times it reads like a wannabe 'queer' Sex in the City. I say 'wannabe queer' because at times the author veers on gleefully fetishizing her transgender partner.

This book makes me glad I am a bisexual trans man and have a built-in b.s. detector for avoiding this type of cis "queer femme", i.e. cis straight girl who dates a trans man (and writes oozing disrespectful dreck about it!), fetishizing him in order to prop up her own nonexistent "queer cred". With simpering purple prose, at that.

To Maggie Nelson my most humble and lowest bow. Exuberant, palpable, intellectually stimulating, but more importantly human to the core. This work is for those who want to expand their minds in acceptance of multiplicity and permutation in human species.

Did not disappoint. Complicated kinship, being a (queer) body in academia, the desire to believe in what language can do... and in Nelson's beautifully wrought style, lyrical and theoretical. I could not put it down.

Apparently, what constitutes "genius" these days is an ability to present overwrought ideological prose on topics related to "gender." To test out my own distaste for Nelson's writing, I plucked a salient line to post on Facebook and did not poison the well. It gleaned so many confounded comments that I deleted it out of embarrassment. Good to know that the masses are still wearing their b.s. detectors!

“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.

For Roland Barthes and Maggie Nelson, the Argo is the ship of love, a vessel continuously repaired and reconstructed through the desires of the Argonauts and their determination to secure love on their own terms. Nelson’s particular ship is constructed around the intersection of theoretical texts and life as it is lived in malls and doctors’ offices, backyards and lecture halls. Writing in short episodic and analytical bursts, Nelson transforms memoir into a larger discussion of gender, family, and representation. But it is the Argonauts, Nelson and her partner Harry Dodge, who turn the ship into a story as they continuously push the transgender love that is their life beyond what they know, beyond the parameters of discursive knowledge, beyond one answer or the other. The compassionate wisdom of D.W. Winnnicott and the determined opposition of Eve Sedgewick come in handy, but Nelson and Dodge always seem to find themselves in uncharted waters: the checkout person who confounds expectations, the duration of childbirth, the sexuality that has changed forever, or maybe not. For Nelson, texts are less a set of rules than one part of a dynamic discussion that includes the unpredictability of the world and the unforeseen consequences of our own decisions. There is compromise and stubbornness and constant struggle, but love always seems to find a way. No matter the situation, Nelson retains a sweetness and tenderness and openness of heart that seems almost as impossible as the book’s almost happy ending. But it isn’t. It’s the sound of another fearless voice telling the world that whatever the odds, hate won’t win.

This is an interesting memoir by the author regarding her relationships with various people and subjects including sexuality, gender roles, homosexuality and childbirth. Her significant "other" was born a female but has now adopted the male gender. His name is Harry and he brings a young boy from a previous relationship into the mix. Harry and Maggie (the author) want to have a child together and so Maggie is artificially inseminated producing their son Iggy. This is a well written book but as you might be sensing I am having a tough time describing it as this is not a book that can be pigeonholed. This book is only for the open minded.

This book takes its reader on a wild ride through some of the fears, joys, and experiences of its author and her partner. I recommend it to anyone who wants a deeper look into the life of a modern family trying to love life while neither fitting in nor standing out.

deeply enjoyable, this is in essence one very bright person's very personal journal made public. the state of the world being what it is, she is also deeply courageous (as is her mate, for the same reason.) i am glad she chose to share her extremely interesting and affecting thinking with us. i am truly sorry to close the cover (already???) -- and so: i would have preferred it had it been a LOT longer. and by that i mean: a. lot. longer. (maggie, are you hearing me?)

Far too pretentious. I went to a great, rigorous grad school, I know all those philosophers, critics, and their theories, but to live your daily life that preciously and precisely? The author is a narcissist and so is her girlfriend/wife. The book was tiresome and exhausting. This book is also nothing but basically a gender theory textbook and dissertation for a useless PhD. in gender studies disguised as a stream of consciousness novel/memoir. It's like the author was trying to cram as many syllables as she could into each sentence; as if using big words could make her appear actually intelligent instead of just a hostile feminist who has taken way too many silly and pointless queer theory and gender studies classes.

Extremely angry and self-pitying. Didn't like how it was addressed to YOU (her lover, Harry) because it made the reader feel completely shut out. An obviously highly self-absorbed author who only cares about herself and her gender identity and that of her lover. She should have just made this a private letter and sent it. Why did I have to read it?

Well, even the negative reviews on this book use words that I have to look up! So I will put it out here as simply as possible: I could not get through the first ten pages because it is extemely egocentric and totally obscure writing so essentially BORING. She might have had some interesting things to say about her situation but I do not have the patience to wait it out. As one reviewer stated, well educated but to what end?

That we are all different and the same. That there is no one way to be. Nelson offers us myriad ways to be, in gender as well as voice, pleasure, and pride , giving the abstract a context in her personal narrative of relationship, motherhood, and daughter-hood, which serves as a grounding for feminist theory. i love her acceptance of human frailty and her delight in what is.