![]() The “you” here and throughout the book is Dodge, who is sometimes an object of romantic rapture, sometimes a partner in argument. Nelson reminisces: “You had Molloy by your bedside and a pile of cocks in a shadowy unused shower stall. The book begins with a bang: enthusiastic anal sex in a dank basement and a confession of love, all within the first paragraph. The effect is that we seem to think alongside Nelson it is easy to follow her anywhere. She handles references with elegance: instead of footnotes, there occasionally pops up a “Michel Foucault” or “Judith Butler” in the margin. Nelson’s style is spacious, digressive, generous in both the breadth of its reading and its esteem for the reader. One could say it’s dense with critical theory, but that gives the wrong impression. ![]() It’s also the best kind of nonfiction read, the kind that enlarges one’s reading list by half. It’s a chronicle of first-time motherhood. It’s an appreciation of her favorite queer thinkers. It’s a love letter to her fluidly gendered partner, the artist Harry Dodge. The Argonauts, a slim book by poet and critic Maggie Nelson, contains multitudes. ![]()
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