The Art of Cruelty

A Reckoning

By: Maggie Nelson

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

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 20th-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.

©2011 Maggie Nelson (P)2017 Tantor

Great book!

I really enjoyed the book, as I do all of Maggie Nelson's writing, but given the density of the content, the narrator spoke wayyy too fast. Had to listen at 75% speed.

Fire Tavia Gilbert!!!

Tavia Gilbert reads too fast for her own comprehension and gets a lot of words wrong. I appreciate her on-point french accent but she often mispronounce english words or gets them entirely wrong which is kind of a basic no-no for an audiobook performance.

Is Artaud so glad and at peace?

This is an articulation of things that I’ve dealt with for a long time, and for that I am grateful

Hugely powerful

Maggie Nelson is extraordinary Russia. The range of references is very broad and also very deep. The only negative I had was the new races voice I found it
too staccato and mannered. Nonetheless, the material was compelling enough that I listened to the end I have now ordered the book so that I can read it in hardcopy. It warrants that kind of attention.

Paradigm enhancing

This is my 2nd Maggie Nelson audio book (1st was “On Freedom”). Again, I feel as tho Nelson guided me thru thoughts, questions, and emotions that terrify me. I’m very thankful for her perspective. On to another one of her works.

Wonderful book, mediocre narration

The narrator mispronounces so many terms, artists, and theorists to the point of being distracting.

Fantastic, but I do not recommend this book first.

This is the third book in her Cruelty series (she states this in her interview with Judith Butler found on YB). It's fantastically well researched, thorough without being polemic, and witty (at times). Nelson is one of my favorite writers. She's a brilliant poet (Bluets is chef kisses fingers). lol

However, I do not recommend it for people who haven't read Jane, and The Red Parts by Nelson first. Also, if you're not well versed in criticism (this includes me), buckled up and have a tab for Google open. Read Butler, Scarry, Sontag, in addition to this. Basically, I will be coming back to this book after I've gained more contextual insight. Note: it's not that Nelson is hard to understand by any means; she guides you through how she's uses text. It's that I'm pretentious and feel inadequate because I haven't read as much. lol

Happy reading, nerds.

Long Justification Of Not Watching The News

The headline is the summary. Talked about a lot of things that... are not art. Has bad opinions on art. And mostly seems like she's interested in finding a way to feel like not watching the news is radical. Which sure, whatever, don't watch the news, but it's not radical. You're not morally superior for not doing it. Being cognizant of cruelty does not need to make one cruel