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    The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
    The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
    The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning

    Written by Maggie Nelson

    Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?



    Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 21, 2017
    ISBN9781515989219
    The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
    Author

    Maggie Nelson

    Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic, and award-winning author of 'The Argonauts', 'Bluets', 'The Art of Cruelty', 'Jane: A Murder' and 'The Red Parts'. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

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    Reviews for The Art of Cruelty

    4/5

    73 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      So Maggie Nelson on a bad day is better than just about anyone on their best day. Am I disappointed that I was not as crazy about this essay collection as I was "Bluets" or "Argonauts?" A little bit. Her assertions are a bit more academic than I like (that's really only because I am not nearly as smart as Maggie Nelson) and the spoonful of Bluets and cupful of Argonauts that are about Maggie Nelson herself to me balance out the density of her citations, research and ideas. We don't get any of that here and I missed it.

      Still, I would read Maggie Nelson write anything. I started with Bluets a year ago and have been screaming "more, more" since. I've only got one book of her essays left and then I'll start on the poetry. This one may not be my favorite but I maintain that every new Maggie Nelson book cannot arrive fast enough.
    • 4/5
      I've never read any Maggie Nelson and I am glad I have. I disagree with some of her arguments, but most of it is extremely salient, and hard to stomach. It also gets points for shouting out ; Angela Carter (for the Sadeian Woman), Anais Nin (for the graphic description of the seduction of her father in Incest: A Diary of Love) and a bunch of other women I strongly admire for their own grotesque behaviors. Takes a minute and my audiobook version is read by someone I really don't like (the voice really makes the audiobook) but it's something I can ignore at this point.