I Love I Love Dick. What Else Will I Love?

October 27, 2016 6:00 AM

Seeking recommendations for books that mix the personal with critique/theory.

Now that the weather's getting nicer (here in Florida), I want to resume my favorite way to spend late afternoons: sitting outside as the sun sets, reading. My favorite types of books to read during this time mix the personal/reflective with theory/criticism. I like getting to learn about the author/narrator while also learning about feminist/art/cultural/literary theory.

Books that have scratched this itch for me: I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (all of her books, really; and I know I Love Dick is "fiction;" I'm okay with fiction suggestions); Maggie Nelson's books (Bluets; The Art of Cruelty; The Argonauts); Heroines by Kate Zambreno; My 1980s by Wayne Koestenbaum; Laconia by Masha Tupitsyn.

Eileen Myles is usually suggested with these books. I've read Chelsea Girls and wasn't that into it.

What else should I read? Thanks!

posted by dearwassily to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

I wonder if any of the answers in this question of mine might fit the bill?
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:10 AM on October 27, 2016

I'd strongly recommend Olivia Laing's "Lonely City", which is excellent both as memoir and as art criticism. Carol Mavor's "Black and Blue" also fits, although the personal aspects are somewhat more muted. Relatedly, T. J. Clark's "The Sight of Death" is an attempt to record his encounters with several works of Poussin. In fiction, Don DeLillo's novel "Point Omega" opens and closes with some interesting meditations on an artwork (Douglas Gordon's "24 Hour Psycho").
posted by informavore at 6:33 AM on October 27, 2016

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti
posted by galvanized unicorn at 6:53 AM on October 27, 2016

I was really into I'm Very Into You. For what it's worth, Acker and Myles were sort of frenemies, and so if you didn't like Myles, maybe you'll like Acker ; ).
posted by pinkacademic at 7:17 AM on October 27, 2016

I'm Trying to Reach You by Barbara Browning
posted by neroli at 8:41 AM on October 27, 2016

- Sarah Schulman, especially Stagestruck and Gentification of the Mind, about New York in the eighties, AIDS, and art
- Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg, about gender and queerness
- Gender Failure, by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote, on being a nonbinary trans person
posted by ITheCosmos at 9:15 AM on October 27, 2016

Seconding Emily Books!

You might like My Paris by Gail Scott, I think I found Scott via a Kate Zambreno interview (I didn't love Heroines but I like her taste.)

Also: White Girls by Hilton Als.
posted by SoftRain at 12:12 PM on October 27, 2016

I browsed through Susan howe's that this recently and got some Maggie Nelson ish vibes from it, but kind of more guarded. I think it might fit the bill.
posted by lethologues at 1:12 PM on October 27, 2016

I loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:27 PM on October 27, 2016

Christina Sharpe's brand-new book In the Wake. Elizabeth Chin's My Life with Things! Seconding Sarah Schulman and Carol Mavor. Incognegro by Frank Wilderson? Parts of Ann Cvetkovich's Depression. Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother.
posted by kickingthecrap at 6:32 PM on October 27, 2016

Thank you for all the recommendations. I have a lot of good reading ahead of me.
posted by dearwassily at 10:40 AM on October 28, 2016

Witold Rybczynski is an architect who set out to build a boathouse, and ended up building a house. He chronicled the project along with thoughts on art and architecture in 'The Most Beautiful House in the World'.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 5:31 PM on October 28, 2016