Like Love: Essays and Conversations

by Maggie Nelson

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 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.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Queer, Art, LGBT, Memoir, Womens

337 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2024

About the author

Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Norton, 2011; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets (Wave Books, 2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (Free Press, 2007; reissued by Graywolf, 2016), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (U of Iowa Press, 2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist for the PEN/ Martha Albrand Art of the Memoir). In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA in Poetry, an Innovative Literature Fellowship from Creative Capital, and an Arts Writers Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She writes frequently on art, including recent catalogue essays on Carolee Schneemann and Matthew Barney. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has taught literature, writing, art, criticism and theory at the New School, Pratt Institute, and Wesleyan University. For 12 years she taught in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts; in fall 2017 she will join the faculty of USC. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

the thing about collecting everything an author has ever written about a subject as broad as "art," as she wrote it with no future awareness of its looming collection, is that you definitionally are kinda taking the good with the bad.

i'm not new york-y, in so many ways: i don't pay a lot in rent, i'm not adventurous, i stay inside a lot, and i don't know how to even begin to understand abstract art. i don't think i'm above it. quite the opposite. i would never be like "my four year old could create this painting / bash this barbie's head in / create this sculpture that is a talking refrigerator." i'm closer to the four year old — it just goes over my head.

i loved the parts of this that included maggie nelson in conversation with interesting people, including those i hadn't heard of and those i had. i loved the parts that were explorations of things i know, or of books.

but for me, there is only so much blood and sh*t and gore and violence smashed into a canvas or a polaroid or film recording i can bear.

bottom line: i always love maggie nelson but she is way cooler than me. this was made up of exclusively the cooler than me parts.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection of short non-fiction by writer, poet and academic Maggie Nelson spans close to twenty years of her career. In comparison with The Argonauts her radically-reconfigured memoir whose form partly mirrored momentous shifts in Nelson’s own life, these short pieces may seem disparate or oddly jumbled together. But Nelson’s seemingly effortless mingling of the personal and more analytical enables the opening of a pathway through, so that entries here combine to form a map or geography of Nelson’s experiences, her shifting priorities and enduring preoccupations: from queer culture to art to parenting to the place of poetry. Entries range from transcripts of discussions, musings, email exchanges and more formal essays; represented here are many of the writers, artists and creators who’ve shaped Nelson’s perceptions of the world around her, often producers of work that stirs memories and observations about her personal history. Figures who, in myriad ways, guided her through a contemporary existence overshadowed by conflict and ongoing climate change - what Nelson characterises as living in a state of ‘exhilarated despair.’

Nelson’s writing can be dense and demanding, sometimes it’s provocative to the point of courting controversy. But it can also be intimate and accessible. There are some impressive entries here from reflections on the work of Alice Notley, Ben Lerner, and Eileen Myles to responses to Drucker and Ernst’s “Relationship Series” documents of their time together during the process of gender transition. Nelson’s gaze takes in the legacy of feminist performance artists starting with Carolee Schneemann’s ground-breaking practice. She includes reflections on Darcy Steinke, Judith Butler, Fred Moten, artist Sarah Lucas, Bjork, and authors such as Natalia Ginzburg – the last in an especially poignant meditation on loss, isolation and the recent pandemic. Like any collection there were pieces here that worked better than others, at least for me. I didn’t always side with Nelson’s perspective but I admired her process. And I really responded to a number of elements: Nelson’s thoughts on condemnation and shaming; the rhetoric of policing that shuts down possibility or limits the space to talk about certain forms of desire.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Random House for an ARC

[Lillian Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I read after I almost died. It became imbued with a quality of resurrection and renewal, of hope and optimism. A reminder in every reference I knew that I still hold so much in my brain, and in every reference I did not know what I have still to engage with and revel in. It gave me life, a reminder of love, of the kinds of loves and of what really matters. Maggie gives me the intellectual tools to articulate and process my thoughts, which have been so intense and overwhelming since my accident that I have struggled to write them down. But I will, because she does, and it is the greatest thing in the world. I cannot die, because I still have so much more to write. I love Maggie Nelson.

[CJ Alberts]

it did not slap for me guys :((((((((( i had no idea who some of these people in conversation with her were so i wasnt invested in like 70% of this so i dnf'd. might get the physical copy to skim thru to just the essays but kinda seemed like a meandering book of compiling existing writing

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This felt markedly different from showing up at a protest, organizing in a basement, donating money or writing books.
It felt different because it pierced us.

Of course she’s talking about vaccines. That feels quaint. Those simpler times of a few years back, please allow me to sigh.

My previous experience with Nelson had been mixed so I can state this exceeded my expectations. It certainly delivered a reading list. These are largely interviews and discussions with art reviews and memoirs tacked on to round things conceptually. The first piece is a conversation with Wayne Koestenbaum and there are references to Deodat de Severac, Brian Wilson, Anne Carson, Paul Celan and Simonides in the FIRST SIX LINES. Despite that or due to such I didn’t abandon the enterprise and indeed read for an hour despite my being knackered.

I certainly think it is time for Fred Moten and Julia Kristeva. It may also be time to return to Nelson’s other work which I often had issues with when perhaps attempting to confine her to a stable notion of genre. Hence the concept of the Argos.

[Kurt Neumaier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Assumes you are an intelligent person, which sometimes I found frustrating but mostly felt very grateful for.

[Susa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggie Nelsonia lukiessa itsellekin tulee ihastuttavan älykäs olo.

[elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

maggie nelson, the love of my life! i did enjoy this book, but i do feel like it felt a bit too disjointed (i prefer essay collections that are definitely more cohesive). i also only truly enjoyed about half of this, so 3 stars it is.

thank you graywolf press for the arc!

[Janine Dukelow]

Didn't read the entire book. Highlight was Björk and Maggie Nelson's fangirl letters to each other and the essay on Judith Butler

[kate j · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think loneliness is assuaged by trees, as well. i also want to read every book to ever exist, ever. that’s this summers project! i’ll let you know how it goes.

[Eric]

God is so inscrutable, so incomprehensible, wrote Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, that we must speak of Him only in terms of what He is not. Similarly, since the beginning of her career, the books of Maggie Nelson have offered critics only a fugitive sense of categorization. It's easy enough to say what they aren't. Far from merely defying, blending, or bending the received wisdom of genre makers, they've helped to usher in an entirely new kind of writing. Prior to The Argonauts (2015), no one could have guessed that critical theory would ever go anything like mainstream—that Deleuze, Barthes, or Wittgenstein could be summoned so earnestly as guides for living. Yes, the question of Nelsonian taxonomy continues to prompt a kind of gladiatorial combat, pitting critic after critic against the composite beasts that are her books. And readers, her fans especially, have come to expect as much. But Nelson's latest, a selection of her shorter nonfiction titled Like Love: Essays and Conversations, is as conventional as a lion. Not that it lacks any of the vigor of her previous books: it is more predictable, more old-fashioned, what amounts to a behind-the-scenes look at the mind that has made for such engrossing reading, in such compelling experiments with form, on subjects ranging from sex and death to gender and motherhood.

The book consists of thirty pieces, chronologically arranged, that appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies between 2006 and 2023. ...

Read the rest in the latest issue of American Book Review! https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/article/9...

[andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

here's a thank you to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the advanced digital copy of maggie nelson's latest.

this collection is out April 2nd, 2024.

--

please don't pull a me, please don't see this title and think this is maggie nelson giving you a collection of essays about love.

it's not that these essays don't include love, it's just that most of these essays already exist in the public sphere - previous interviews with figures like bjork, a forward written for the rerelease of samantha hunt's the seas, an academic essay breaking down hilton als' ability to write subversively without alienating too many readers - and are more about maggie's love for her subjects.

perhaps the most interesting part of this collection is less the essays themselves and more the fact that they're arranged chronologically - disseminating pieces of maggie's lore pertaining to the construction of bluets, of the red parts, of the argonauts - giving insight to her writing processes and how they evolve over time. it was interesting to me to read about her avoiding jacqueline rose's work in the process of writing out of fear of failure in the harsh light of comparison versus how other writers - i'm thinking darcey steinke's - seemed to motivate her by comparison. there's a four year difference between the two essays which does make you wonder if, as was touched on during the essay with sarah lucas, this is a part of diminishing potential, if by aging we're all not just harangued by the notion that new accomplishments are gradating away and it becomes more difficult not to look at ourselves through the lens of other people.

another interesting part of maggie's evolutionary journey in these works was the paradigm shift of the pandemic. harping back to the conversation with jacqueline rose, maggie notes that on freedom was drafted pre-2020, but revisions through the bulk of a year had to take place at home in the presence of a child when she had only ever gone through that process in the sanctity of privacy. the work didn't change, but the world in which it needed to be performed did.

so yes, a possibly unnecessary collection of works you may or may not have consume before made new in how they show you the cartography of maggie's life, the world, and how her work was impacted by both.

breaking this book to a granular level is also possible. some essays, for me, were ultimately skippable because i was either not interested or not able to engage. some were essays that i want to revisit after consuming more work about the subject. fred moten's black and blur has since become a piece of interest for me, as is ben lerner's 10:04. lerner's felt lovingly pieced apart, moten's just felt sublime. a few standouts for me were the epistolary piece with bjork, whose letters to maggie felt as though could have expanded into their own isolated volume of poetry, plus a piece about prince inspiring and fostering maggie's burgeoning sexuality in childhood.

this book is absolutely rife with maggie's usual fair of conversations about gender, sexuality, capitalism, feminism, and the making of art and the drive to create. regardless of whatever you're seeking to find here, you'll uncover something - these are not works about love, but they also are.

[Charley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nuggets from conversations between Maggie and others that improved my experience of being alive:

“i just read somewhere that the difference between someone who has anxiety or someone who is narcissistic is simply the level of emotional responsibility, the ones with anxiety have too much, the ones with narcissism too little. perhaps books written in the latter manner have no relevance anymore. is the 20th century guitar solo of nietzsche and warhol's heroes over?“ - björk

“Let's face it. Were undone by each other. And if we're not, we’re missing something.” - judith butler

[Nicola Balkind · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Good collection, one for Nelson fans and completists.

[Hannah Mosca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fire and sooo gay!!!! yay. i dont think i have ever read a book of essays, let alone cultural essays all about art (in so many different forms, on so many different important subjects). the pieces are collections of interviews, email exchanges (which were my favorite to read), and critical analyses, that span from 2006 to 2023. the chronologically rlly gives the book this evolving nature, and a sense of narrative as you follow Maggie and what she as a writer and thinker cares about and how that has shifted or grown or sustained throughout her publishing career. cool insights ab things she was thinking about and people she was talking to while writing her other books. also!! she speaks to and writes about some dope ass people!!!!! I literally have a giant list of artists to check out and authors to read after finishing this book. highly recommend also bc it can be consumed in bite size chunks--the essays range from length but the longest is like 30 so pages. ill def be going back to this one to re read certain essays

My favorites:

From Importunate to Meretricious, With Love
Porousness, Perversity, Pharmacopornographia - on matthew barey's OTTO trilogy
The Grind - on Prince (SO GOOD)
A continuity, imagined - a conversation with Bjork (this was so flipping cool to read)
The longest road - conversation with jacqueline rose
I just want to know what else might be available
My brilliant friend - on Lhasa de sela (cried)
The call
And with the trees

[Clara Martin]

A new Nelson & I get my notebook out. By the time I finish reading, I'm left with four pages of phrases, artists, books, quotes, notes and words. This time: R.D. Laing "knots," The Weather in Proust, Peter Handke, Hammer!, Winnicott, Mary Gaitskill's "Gattino," Suicide Blonde, Herve Guibert, oddny eir, "redistributing the sensible,"shame and sedgwick?, "long silence," Marianne Moore.

I love that there are conversations in here, because that is what Nelson's writing often is/feels like - a big open(ish) conversation with central interlocutors and drifters and threads that pop up and disappear, voices that poke their head around the corner before wandering off back into the party.

[Amanda Sola · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is hard to review because so many of the essays surrounded movies, art, and literature that I am not familiar with so I constantly felt out of the loop, no matter how much she tried to explain it. This also translates to how I felt with her conversations with various writers and artists. I don't know them so what they say about their work isn't impacting me.

I also found it to be a little self-servicing that she put entire conversations in this with friends telling her how great she is.

There was some good - I particularly found the essays that were written more like mini memoirs to be compelling, specifically the one about Lhasa De Sela.

Between this and Bluets I just think Maggie might not be for me.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag, but worthwhile. Review to come.

[Tuomas Aitonurmi]

Sanoin muutama päivä sitten keskustelussa, että nautin taidekirjoittamisesta erityisesti silloin, kun siihen yhdistyy arvostamani kirjoittajan tunnistettava ääni. Ei siis tarvinnut kahta kertaa miettiä, tartunko Maggie Nelsonin taide-esseitä, kirjallisuuskritiikkejä ja taiteilijakeskusteluita sisältävään kokoelmaan. Jotkut ovat sanoneet, että Nelsonin ystäviensä kanssa käymät keskustelut, joissa osapuolet kehuvat toisiaan, ovat jotenkin kiusallisia, mutta minusta ystävyyksistä, taiteilijaystävyyksistä ja ajattelijaystävyyksistä ei puhuta maailmassa tarpeeksi, ja virvoituin niistä. Ystävistä ja kiinnostuksenkohteiden ympärille rakentuneista yhteisöistä muodostuvat valitut perheet ovat aina olleet erityisesti sateenkaari-ihmisille elintärkeitä. Monet kirjan dialogit vievät yllättäviin paikkoihin, joihin edes Nelsonin kaltainen ajattelija, tuntija ja kielellistäjä ei varmasti olisi päässyt yksin.

(Loput tekstistä blogissani)

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

first third is pretentious almost to a point of nonsense (words like “macropharmacopornographical” used without pretext… c’mon) but eventually she finds her way to a more mature and accessible mode of communicating her (still brilliant) ideas - in that sense, it’s interesting to watch her grow as a writer/thinker/person over time through these less autobiographical pieces. i far preferred her odes to individuals rather than analyses of particular artworks - “the grind” about prince, “the reenchantment of carolee schneemann,” “my brilliant friend” about lhasa de sela.

for the art theory girlies for sure though

[kari trail · Rating 3 out of 5]

“i must protect the transmission, smuggle it out of the theater, to examine it later in my room, see if it still glows. if it does, i might start to think in sentences about it. if the sentences get bossy enough, i might start write them down.”

the slower i read through this the more i liked it! for a big chunk i felt torn between loving maggie nelson’s writing but also having very little context for a lot of the niche art references she was pulling, which made for equal parts head scratching and jotting down great quotes. taking time with each essay made it way more enjoyable. there were so many interesting bits (book refs, installations, email conversations)… left feeling really excited to write and with so many lines to dive back into later !

[adeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

shout out to my mom for giving this book to me / like maggie nelson with me.

tbh i think a lot of the people who left reviews claiming this collection of essays is disjointed / about nothing, don’t really get that maggie nelson is an art nut who is going to: 1. always be at some esoteric art show; 2. saying something sedgwickian; 3. BE IN CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE; 4. be open to not knowing… which is cool, and people should appreciate it more or something.

also, maggie nelson always introduces me to new (old) artists and writers and she gets an extra point for that.

[Jules McMillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve had ~80 pages left of this book since leaving Mexico in April and I FINALLY FINISHED. Anyway, Maggie Nelson is and always will be my girl and reading this collection of essays and interviews made me so happy (despite what the eight months it took me to read it might make you think). Some pieces were better than others, but overall I learned a lot about art and writing and life and enjoyed getting back into academia for a minute.

[Rachael A · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me a while to get through. The writing was thorough, and passionate, and lyrical. And yet, I still found myself slogging through it. I listened to it on audio, which I don't think in this case helped my reading experience. It felt dense and was hard to follow, despite it being essays and therefore not an in depth plot that needed teasing apart. But alas. I am intrigued by Maggie Nelson's writing, but will most likely pick up her other books as a physical copy to give her another go. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

For now focused on a few essays at a time. I'll revisit this collection again (and again).

[laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

loistava ystäväni essee oli suosikkini

[Anna Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

At most times, pretentious, and from time to time, profound

[Laura King · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never read Maggie Nelson before but now I am most definitely a stan

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major thanks to NetGalley and GrayWolf Press for offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:

Of course, with any Nelson, it is hard to find a place to start. But Nelson starts with Hilton Als. And Hilton Als, I feel, always starts with Didion. Didion is always at the back of his mind, and mine. I just rewatched The Center Will Not Hold and I reminded again and again why I write, why I love. Because there is so much of life.

"𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘑𝘰𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘸 𝘶𝘱, 𝘰𝘳 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱. 𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴."

Though I see the issues with Didion's approach at times, it's in the vague does she find the concrete, make the concrete, to situate herself within the times, within the center of everything. This is how she finds the holding. These are the details. All in the story.

So much of life is wondering and centering and understand what home is. Is it who I love? is it who I care for? Is it how I build friendships? Create connections? Is it how I withstand turbulent times?

This is very much Nelson's pandemic book, a filler episode in between the larger works, a space to talk about the larger works, stitch them together, and though some of these essays have appeared online and in print in different places (ie. her email exchange with bjork and applied dislike for von Trier as a person) it was wonderful to revisit some of them (ie. her introduction to Hunt's The Seas). She has so much love. Talking about the love. Art that has shaped her, challenged her, all love adjacent.

The collection wonderfully ends with a chat with her and Eileen Myles about trees and art and going against the grain, against time. Because I think that's how love works. All against time. All against the worries. All against everything that makes a day long.

[Breanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

like being in a college class but you lost the syllabus on the first day