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The Argonauts Audiobook
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Publisher Description
An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson’s account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.
Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson’s insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.
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“[An] incredibly rich autobiographical meditation…Nelson blends philosophical inquiry, memoir, and gender criticism in a form she has dubbed ‘autotheory.’ Like her writing, Nelson’s theory blurs, eradicates, even breaks the margins of binary thinking and of the prevailing normative notion that we should each live a life that is ‘all one thing.’”
— Library Journal
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“In this gender-bending memoir, Maggie Nelson writes about the way both their bodies were changing, and about the intricacies of building her queer family.”
— New York Times -
“A superb exploration of the risk and the excitement of change…An exceptional portrait both of a romantic partnership and of the collaboration between Nelson’s mind and heart.”
— New Yorker -
“So much writing about motherhood makes the world seem smaller after the child arrives…Nelson’s book does the opposite.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Slays entrenched notions of gender, marriage, and sexuality with lyricism, intellectual brass, and soul-ringing honesty.”
— Vanity Fair -
“A magnificent achievement of thought, care, and art.”
— Los Angeles Times -
“Reading Maggie Nelson is like watching a high-wire act. Her books are inspiring.”
— Boston Globe -
“Nelson’s writing is fluid…She masterfully analyzes the way we talk about sex and gender.”
— Huffington Post -
“Part portrait of a happy family, part critical meditation on queerness…It doesn’t hurt that she speaks with the voice of a poet either.”
— Vulture -
“Exploring questions of family, mortality, and gender, and finding inspiration in both the personal and the artistic along the way.”
— Vol1 Brooklyn -
“One of the most intelligent, generous, and moving books of the year.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“A book that will challenge readers as much as the author has challenged herself.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015
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A 2015 GoodReads Readers’ Choice Best Memoir & Autobiography Book Award nominee
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A 2015 New York Times Book Review Notable Book
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A Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015 for Nonfiction
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A NPR’s Great Reads Selection of 2015
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A Flavorwire Pick for Best Nonfiction of 2015
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The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2015 Selection
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Favorite Books of the Decade
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A Portland Mercury Pick for Required Reading of 2015
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Winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
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An Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for May 2016
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A Bust Magazine Pick from Carrie Brownstein's Reading List
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A 2017 Folio Prize Nominee
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An Audible Editors Top Pick of Favorite Audiobooks
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A London Guardian Pick of Best Books of the 21st Century
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A Literary Hub Pick of the 10 Best Memoirs of the Decade
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A Paste Magazine Pick of Best Memoirs of the Decade
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An Esquire Pick of Best Books of the Decade
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An Autostraddle Pick of Best Queer, Lesbian, Bisexual Books of the Decade
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A Wired Magazine Pick of Best Nonfiction of the Decade
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A Vulture.com Pick
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Vol.1 Brooklyn Pick
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A New York Public Library Staff Pick of Favorite Books of the Last 125 Years
The Argonauts Listener Reviews
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Sev Myles, 10/7/2024
About Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson is a poet, art critic, and author of nonfiction books such as The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, and Jane: A Murder. She teaches in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.