The Argonauts (2015)

I really enjoyed this short book by Maggie Nelson, a memoir of brave life choices informed by feminist theory, queer theory, and authentic lived experience. Life, death, birth, change, commitment—she covers a lot of territory. I’m way behind on feminist / queer theory but found more to follow up here. Mostly I was fascinated by the memoir side, where she works on becoming pregnant and then bearing the child. At the same time her gender-fluid partner, the artist Harry Dodge, is making his own chemical and surgical changes to feel more comfortably male. I was fascinated by how strange it was and yet so familiar, just people dealing with life and the hands they were dealt, like all of us. Nelson sets her context broadly, drawing on the wide range of what she’s reading, art exhibits she is visiting, and more. I’m almost intimidated by these lives which are so widely kept out of sight, working through gender issues that have always confused me. Nelson’s accounts of her pregnancy and especially giving birth are open and detailed and also fascinating. It made me realize how little I know of such events. I feel like a curtain is drawn around them but also realize that could just be my experience as a single cis-gendered man (a term I’m almost comfortable using), which is my cultural position of privilege. I like the privilege, of course, but also of course hate that it isn’t the privilege of everyone. A stalking incident occurs during Nelson’s pregnancy, related to Nelson’s books about her aunt’s murder in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969, Jane: A Murder and The Red Parts. Her stalker had some kind of problem with her or her work and wanted to discuss it with her. Witnesses put him on the campus where Nelson taught and worked, and he was quite intense about his search for her. It’s a skillful way to ratchet the tensions, the anxieties, Nelson and Dodge live with as a queer couple, as transgressive public figures (even if not intentionally), and for Nelson as a woman. Nothing comes of the stalking, but we see clearly how women and other vulnerable minorities are forced to look at and live with their fears and reality. The title refers to the philosophical question of whether anything can ever remain the same. A sailing ship is the usual example, but a car or house or stereo system works the same. As you go along maintaining it and replacing parts of it that are wearing out, eventually you arrive at the point (in theory) where none of the original material remains, yet you still have the thing. I believe Nelson sees this in how we decide, consciously, formally, to carry on the species—love, marriage, birth, change, death. It keeps going and it keeps changing and yet, planet conditions permitting, it still remains humanity.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.