Reviewed by Marshall McGahey
Maggie Nelson’s 2024 book, Like Love is a compelling array of writings that combines essays written throughout the last 20 years of Nelson’s career. Nelson gives readers a book that focuses on art, love, and sexuality. Nelson’s work includes conversations with Wayne Koestenbaum, Brian Blanchfield, and Eileen Myles, as well as many others. Many of the chapters offer Nelson’s own thoughts on art she has consumed, such as Black and Blur, by Fred Moten, Natalia Ginzburg’s essay, “Winter in the Abruzzi”, and the Feral Domestic video trilogy by Dani and Sheilah ReStack. Like many of Nelson’s other books, Like Love has an unfiltered, scattered affect, but organized in a way completely different from The Argonauts or Bluets. Of the 30 essays included in this collection, the three that stood out most are “The Grind: on Prince,” “A Continuity, Imagined: Conversation with Björk,” and “The Call: In Honor of Judith Butler.”
In “The Grind: On Prince,” Nelson writes a largely autobiographical essay on her relationship with Prince’s music and movie as an adolescent. Nelson writes, “I wanted to be a diminutive, profuse, electric ribbon of horniness and divine grace.” This essay concentrates on Nelson’s burgeoning sexuality as a teenager, and she offers musings on sex and love as a young person. “The Grind” is a must read to understand the central theme of love, and her musings on Prince brings a nostalgic aspect to the book as well. Nelson weaves lyrics from Prince’s hit, “Darling Nikki,” throughout the essay, and draws many references from Prince’s 1984 cult classic film, Purple Rain. Nelson keeps and informal tone throughout most of her essays, and this is no exception in “The Grind.” Reading it feels like your deep within Nelson’s brain, as if she’s sharing with you her childhood secrets.
Maggie Nelson’s conversation with Icelandic musician Björk contains the most interesting parts of Nelson’s book. Through a series of three emails to one another, both Björk and Nelson provide readers with their thoughts on womanhood and their thoughts on the other’s writings. Admittedly, much of this essay is the two women going back and forth complimenting the other, but the other parts contain beautiful musings on art and violence. Björk writes one of the most compelling lines in the book, saying “do you recognize that feeling? to pride oneself in absorbing the dark and overturn it?” (note that Björk does not use capitalization in her emails). Nelson and Björk give readers a lovely glimpse into an admiration of two female artists, and I found that the casual, chatty tone of the essay made the read fun and light.
The third essay, “The Call: In honor of Judith Butler” is Nelson’s thoughts on Judith Butler’s quote, “Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something.” Written in her book “Precious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence,” this quote serves as the framework of this essay and Nelson provides her own take on what it means to become “undone.” Writing about Judith Butler is not new for Nelson. Butler, a gender theorist and philosopher, has been featured in also been featured in Nelson’s work The Argonauts. Nelson writes about the intersection of codependency and autonomy, and the morality of becoming enraptured in another person. This essay is one of Nelson’s more serious in the collection and is more overtly academic than many of the others. Nelson provides readers with the good and bad of “undoing” and her thoughts on relationships and maintaining independence while in love.
Nelson’s essays are beautiful, but before reading please note that many of her references would not be understood by many people- myself included. Much of this book relies on outside knowledge, and it can be hard to get through without having to look up certain artists or books. I was also unfamiliar with many of the artists she had conversations with, which made those essays harder to understand as well. On the flip side of this, the book did teach me a lot about the literary and art world and introduced me to some incredible writers and thinkers. But at times I wished that it was slightly more accessible to the average person. That being said, it is a book of critical essays, and Nelson undoubtedly writes them beautifully.