A while back, I complained about a book that I felt tried to tackle too much in too short of a time. That book was 194 pages long. Now I come to you with a book that's only 143 pages long, covers a lot of territory--and does it beautifully, cohesively, and meaningfully.
The Argonauts is a memoir/think piece by Maggie Nelson, in which she touches on queer/trans life, motherhood, being an academic, being a writer, identity and body politics, to name a few. So why did this book work for me where the other didn't? I've been puzzling this over since finishing Argonauts a few days ago.
Part of it may be the difference between memoir and fiction. The novel felt like it was being forced around ideas, whereas Nelson's memoir is a fleeting glance at the many things that are important to her. It's not a linear narrative, and at times reads more like a piece of philosophy than a memory.
Some of it rests in the beautiful, thoughtful writing throughout Argonauts. Also in the way that the author touches deftly, concisely on certain topics and lets the reader consider them without needing to flog them into the reader's brain. She seems to trust her reader to have a certain level of intelligence that's complimentary to the reader, and which sometimes made me feel not so smart, but in a good way--in a "you know, if you learned more about this topic, you could respond to it more credibly" than "wow are you an idiot give up and just read 50 Shades of Grey from now on). That in itself is a gift, from Nelson to the reader (or, in this case, me).
Perhaps best of all, she opens the door for people who don't know much or aren't exposed much to the world of gender fluidity and gently gives us some different ways to think about it (well--let's be honest, there are people in this world who don't want to think about it at all; their loss). She's plainspoken and straightforward at times, poetic at others:
"People are different from each other. Unfortunately, the dynamic of becoming a spokesperson almost always threatens to bury this fact. You may keep saying that you only speak for yourself, but your very presence in the public sphere begins to congeal difference into a single figure, and pressure begins to bear down hard upon it. Think of how freaked some people got when activist/actress Cynthia Nixon described her experience of her sexuality as 'a choice.' But while I can't change, even if I tried, may be a true and moving anthem for some, it's a piss-poor one for others. At a certain point, the tent may need to give way to field."
A slim, thoughtful book that definitely leads itself to rereading.