Maggie Nelson

A Guardian Book of the Year Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation - Olivia Laing Bluets winds its way through depression, divinity, alcohol, and desire, visiting along the way with famous blue figures, including Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, Yves Klein, Leonard Cohen and Andy Warhol. While its narrator sets out to construct a sort of ‘pillow book’ about her lifelong obsession with the colour blue, she ends up facing down both the painful end of an affair and the grievous injury of a dear friend. The combination produces a raw, cerebral work devoted to the inextricability of pleasure and pain, and to the question of what role, if any, aesthetic beauty can play in times of great heartache or grief. Much like Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, Bluets has passed between lovers in the ecstasy of new love, and been pressed into the hands of the heartbroken. Visceral, learned, and acutely lucid, Bluets is a slim feat of literary innovation and grace, never before published in the UK.

Bluets

"Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color."

Grace McCarter

“There is simply no way that a year from now you’re going to feel the way you feel today,” a different therapist said to me last year at this time. But though I have learned to act as if I feel differently, the truth is that my feelings haven’t really changed.

Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love

36. Goethe describes blue as a lively color, but one devoid of gladness. “It may be said to disturb rather than enliven.” Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? Or is the love itself the disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?

Chloe

Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a spiritual lesson that demands becoming a quadriparalytic. The tepid “there must be a reason for it” notion sometimes floated by religious or quasi-religious acquaintances or bystanders, is, to her, another form of violence. She has no time for it. She is too busy asking, in this changed form, what makes a livable life, and how she can live it. 

199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart. I have heard that this pain can be converted, as it were, by accepting “the fundamental impermanence of all things.” This acceptance bewilders me: sometimes it seems an act of will; at others, of surrender. Often I feel myself to be rocking between them (seasickness).

lily lily 

In the years since, I have sometimes found myself wondering if the same principle applies in other realms—if seeing a particularly astonishing shade of blue, for example, or letting a particularly potent person inside you, could alter you irrevocably, just to have seen or felt it. In which case, how does one know when, or how, to refuse?

taylor miles hopkins

She says (kindly) that she thinks we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. (Can a reflection be a witness? Can one pass oneself the sponge wet with vinegar from a reed?)

You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it…But still you wouldn't be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly.

27. But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?

Patricia K

Mal 

6) The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love's primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.

Maybe to have bleached and patch of sun is better than to have the blue entirely intact (reminder to self). 

Bluets is just a text that is so entirely itself. Nelson does something here that no one else could have done before she dared to do it. this is one of those texts that lends itself to endless rereads—on my third reading of this book, I am still floored, perhaps more so than on the first two reads (although then, too, I felt entirely changed upon reading). it speaks to itself, saying no man steps in a river twice—everything changes, or something changes and something stays the same. this time round, I am returning to this text a woman who too has loved something, or somethings, to a point of obsession, who too has loved a bad man to the point of consolation——and then arrived, again, at "but love is not a consolation. It is light." so it goes. "I long to be a student not of longing but of light."

biddy

I never considered myself someone with a favorite color until this book made me fall deeply for blue in a way I never anticipated.

This book offers something unconventional. Nelson’s thoughts transform into profound meanings you wouldn’t expect. It’s not just about the color blue. It’s a lens through which she explores life and perception. It’s how she, and us, perceive the world.

gitsa

I never considered myself someone with a favorite color until this book made me fall deeply for blue in a way I never anticipated.

This book offers something unconventional. Nelson’s thoughts transform into profound meanings you wouldn’t expect. It’s not just about the color blue. It’s a lens through which she explores life and perception. It’s how she, and us, perceive the world.

It’s like different shades of blue being gathered in tiny fragments from all corners of the world: people’s stories and sprinkles of life in blue that capture countless angles across the globe. Sometimes it’s nonsense, sometimes facts, poems, historic events. All of it shaping a rainbow made entirely of blue, each hue holding its own meaning. And here I am, witnessing a universe being woven together into something I’ve never seen before. How wonderful it is to realize that even before our time, before any of this existed, the color blue lived on through these stories.

🏹

hm. i expected more from this honestly, saw a recommendation and set high expectations for it, sad to say i'm disappointed. the writing is really good i must say! the idea is also interesting, but i found it underwhelming for the most part, blunt language didn't really help. some good quotes though.

marceline

four stars because i’m always a sucker for unconventional prose coming from poets.

i like how the book was structured, which i guess is it’s strongest point. this Guardian review said it best: “The fragments are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically, but according to a poetic, bittersweet logic of their own.”

it’s that internal logic that is also a practice of humility as a reader. i think that as a reader, we’re trained to dissect and spread the material out in order to understand it, taking it piece by piece, part by part, and lay each segment on the table to craft our own story about it. like we’re csi doctors in a lab coat conducting an autopsy or a vulture assessing the best parts of the carcass. but you can only do that when you have familiarity or knowledge of the structure. how can you cleanly slice through bones if you know the skeleton diba? so here, where the skeleton of the book is unknown to us, it’s practically a rollercoaster ride, a challenge to just hold on, accept, and experience. it’s especially fun seeing how there’ll be moments of mirrored experiences in the book.

 you don’t know how it works but you do know what it’s about. good luck replicating it (this is a challenge not to).

Mika

four stars because i’m always a sucker for unconventional prose coming from poets.

i like how the book was structured, which i guess is it’s strongest point. this Guardian review said it best: “The fragments are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically, but according to a poetic, bittersweet logic of their own.”

it’s that internal logic that is also a practice of humility as a reader. i think that as a reader, we’re trained to dissect and spread the material out in order to understand it, taking it piece by piece, part by part, and lay each segment on the table to craft our own story about it. like we’re csi doctors in a lab coat conducting an autopsy or a vulture assessing the best parts of the carcass. but you can only do that when you have familiarity or knowledge of the structure. how can you cleanly slice through bones if you know the skeleton diba? so here, where the skeleton of the book is unknown to us, it’s practically a rollercoaster ride, a challenge to just hold on, accept, and experience. it’s especially fun seeing how there’ll be moments of mirrored experiences in the book.

tl;dr: parang you don’t know how it works but you do know what it’s about. good luck replicating it (this is a challenge not to).

Writing is good but overall seems self-indulgent and dissonant, not worth the hype imo

Xiang

clay

there’s something incredibly blunt and sharp about the way maggie nelson writes, how she weaves each story over and under, again and again. i dont know if i like it but i know i was intrigued enough to hope for a definitive, clear-cut ending, for the sake of the voice, despite knowing there will be none. i think what i like most about her writing is the way she interprets and finds nuance in the mundane but also in the profound. in the book, she uses texts from other authors and paintings from artists, to describe loneliness, desire, grief etc etc. but she also uses anecdotes from her quadraparalytic friend to describe it and come to the same conclusion. what i dont like about her writing is more of MY skill issue than anything else; she’s incredibly verbose, and i read these at night.

"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?"

as a blue-eyed person, i wish that was the case; maybe then reading this wouldn’t feel like rummaging through a vulgarly giant pile of impossibly washed-out blue-tinted trinkets by the sea shore to me. but this speck of dust is golden:

"Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink—Here you are again, it says, and so am I."

green has arms, i know the softness of its embrace

"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?"

as a blue-eyed person, i wish that was the case; maybe then reading this wouldn’t feel like rummaging through a vulgarly giant pile of impossibly washed-out blue-tinted trinkets by the sea shore to me. but this speck of dust is golden:

"Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink—Here you are again, it says, and so am I."

green has arms, i know the softness of its embrace

Isabella 

imagine loving a color so much you write a book about it. this is so beautiful; beautiful prose and beautiful insights. unique exploration on personal experiences (love, lost, suffering, lust, etc). very philosophical and moving. 

“for to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”

“Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? Or is the love itself the disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?”

Tentang warna biru dan merasa biru? Kinda felt like what you mumble when you're absentmindedly looking onto nothing. Dreamy lyrical prose-poems with a string-thin substance.

vanessa

quite literally changed my life. now i can't remember the life i was living prior to reading this. i will be going back to this at different points in time

noelle

lexie

“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”

whoever the prince of blue is kind of an asshole.

erin

Disappointing read right after “The Argonauts.” Makes me like her writing less. 

Tired and obtuse in that breakup way. I probably would have loved it at the right time in my life. As it is? Meh.

Alyanna

“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”

pinnacle of artmaking as research . i will definitely come back to this book in the future

personal library, bought from books are magic brooklyn heights

pinnacle of artmaking as research . i will definitely come back to this book in the future

personal library, bought from books are magic brooklyn heights

rain/anagha

enjoyed the trivial facts but it used unnecessary and unnaturally swanky words i started disliking all shades of blue by the end of it

Maja Cieslik

Wonderfully written book. Maggie Nelson's writing is so poetic and soothing, it's taking reading experience to the next level. The sentences are beautiful by themselves. It's another work by this author that I've read, it's more unconventional than previous one, though maintains similarly high level of work.

Interesting point from a future clinician's perspective: "But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem"

"we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair."

Wonderful poetics: "for to wish to forget how much you loved someone -- and then, to actually forget -- can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart."

to be honest i expected much but was a bit disappointed. i liked nelson’s writing a lot (some passages were very impressive) and the concept was interesting, but also a little underwhelming ? still, very good ! i found this book original, just not that mind-blowing (especially because the structure was quite shaky, in my opinion).

Bluets

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