The Argonauts

By: Maggie Nelson

Narrated by: Maggie Nelson

National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Criticism, 2015.

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.

©2015 Maggie Nelson (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

A relaxing meditation on identity, gender and art

A friend close to the author told me numerous times to read this book. Because I was in school, because I had no time to read, because I was busy raising hell, I put it off. After getting a punishing job that has left me no time for reading I decided to take his advice and buy the audiobook for my long LA commutes. I finally understood the parallels he saw and the radical voice of Maggie I feel is a commonality. I should have read the book but I would have missed out on the author's soothing voice. I would have missed the slight intonation she gave to certain subjects or the correct pronunciation of the names of theorists I had never known how to properly pronounce. This is a beautiful, meditative and at times painfully personal story. What a gift that Harry and Maggie allowed the world in. The ideas, the stories and her voice will stay with me for a very long time. Well done.

Uneven but significant

The “autotheoretical” form of writing here is innovative and there are very powerful sections and wise observations, especially the end, which is excellent. But it is uneven. I can’t say I enjoyed listening through the whole thing, especially given that the reading (by the author!!) is really god awful (monotonous etc.) I don’t know if this is some deliberate choice and if so why, but it doesn’t help…

I cried so much.

it took forever to finish because it was too good. I had to continually stop and take breaks like the Tibetan book of the dead. I am forever changed.

careful it is a weighty book.

Powerful, thoughtful, vulnerable in all the right ways.

I’ve read and re-read and listened to this book. It’s academic and accessible in equal parts. It’s moving and poignant and reads almost like fiction. I love it

Profoundly fascinating yet incredibly boring

The subject matter, ideas and concepts presented in this book are utterly fascinating. I’m not a fan of the wringing style and the monotonous narration made it worse.

Excellent Narrative!

Wonderfully written and insightful. I loved hearing this read by the author. A must read for the human experience.

Mixed Feelings. Strange Book

I found this book frustratingly elusive and lacking linear organization, although there were some interesting points in her stream of thought and ongoing reflections. The narration was mixed as well. Nelson has a beautiful, clear voice, but her reading is methodical and distant. I would not particularly recommend this book because it's too obtuse, even for my quirky taste.

So intense

This is the most important book I read since Between the World and Me.
Intense and electrifying and amazing! I'll definitely be re reading this many many times

wonderful

this book is stupefyingly complete. maggie nelson is one of our living geniuses. life, death, birth, sex, shit, piss, nelsons prose is unwaveringly fair, as if I journalist, and poetic, Full of curiosity and passion for life.

Strange, beautiful, thoughtful, alien

The book sort of starts, and a few hours later sort of ends. In between is a dense, non-frivolous, thought-provoking extended essay on sexuality, gender, pregnancy, birth, and parenthood. It is not autobiography. It is using autobiography as a springboard for thought and reflection. I live in what the author might term a "hetero-normative" world, and was glad that she took me on this tour of this alien land. An interesting and powerful listening experience. Bravo.