Tag Archives: philosophy

Pure Color by Sheila Heti

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I followed up Sheila Heti with some more Sheila Heti. Heti’s Pure Color is basically a work of contemporary theory. I appreciate the work that Heti and others like Maggie Nelson are doing in this area (and I secretly would love to join these authors in this form/genre).

For me, Pure Color read somewhat like How Should a Person Be?, which also was a book that was more *unique* than it was *pleasant* to read, imho. I had a hard time with the main character in the latter, but I found the main character to be…purer in Pure Color, and so I found that was all more palatable to me (which says more about me than about the quality of the book).

To me, Motherhood was by far my favorite and most resonant Heti book. Even still, that’s three Heti books in the past six months, so I think I’ll take a break! I might eventually check out Women in Clothes, but oof, it’s long!

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

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The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson wasn’t on my reading list, but I dropped everything when I remembered I hadn’t read it. What a great book! First, it should be taught in graduate-level theory courses. (It probably is, but nothing like this was taught in mine.) We need more feminist theory like this that truly integrates the (deeply) personal with the philosophical. I can’t be the only one who gobbled this up, and I suppose I can do my part by quoting it and integrating it into my scholarship myself.

The blurbs about this book say it’s about art and philosophy, but, I don’t know, somehow those descriptions fail to capture what Nelson is doing, which is, admittedly, unparalleled and difficult to describe.

The book helped me understand some philosophy and culture more deeply through her insights and critique. Unsurprisingly, I clung to her thoughts on motherhood, joy, femininity, womanhood, and culture. Perhaps especially as a mother, I appreciated the spare, yet complex prose. What can I say–The Argonauts is yet another important book by Nelson.