The Art Of Cruelty: A Reckoning, by Maggie Nelson

There are at least two questions that someone should ask when it comes to whether a book is worth reading. One of them is whether the book is about an interesting subject that one has some degree of interest in, and the other is whether the author has something worth saying about it. It would seem, however one defines it, that thinking about cruelty as it relates to art and media and the public is a worthwhile subject. Perhaps this book’s title should have been reversed to speak about the cruelty of art, since that is what this book is about, rather than the artful nature of cruelty as it has existed in Western culture for the last couple of centuries or so. The second question is less easy to answer. This particular author is known, apparently (though not to me) as the author of poetry, memoir, and criticism that appears (at least from what I can tell) to be highly interested in queer and feminist aspects of both fields. Neither is of much interest to me, and this book left me rather cold, because the author’s reckoning about subjects of agreed importance had very little worthwhile to say. Indeed, it is striking just how dull a short book on the subject of cruelty can be when it is in the hands of someone who writes about critical theory for a living to other bored leftists.

One of the most striking aspects of the author’s discussion of the subject of cruelty in art is just how limited the author’s range is in talking about the subject. There are at least a few famous people that the author talks about–like the Marquis de Sade, Sylvia Plath (too often), Tennessee Williams, Francis Bacon (far too often), and even Warhol. One would think that, given the subject of cruelty, that one could easily make for writing compelling material about the nature of cruelty in the 20th century (and in the 21st century so far), especially cruelty in warfare and the dehumanization that occurred in Fascist and Communist regimes around the world, cruelty as entertainment, the desire on the part of the left to use cruelty as a means of poking through respectability, only demonstrating further why the left is decadent and often self-defeating in its efforts. To be sure, the author talks about some of these matters, but not in the depth or in the seriousness or in the self-awareness that such subjects deserve. Her takes on cruelty are both too personal and too political to be of interest to those who do not share her preoccupations (which tend towards a fondness for poopiness, according to the author’s own admission), and often end up being bored and complacent with a subject that one would not think it desirable or wise to be blase about.

One of the other notable things about this book is just how repetitive it is. There is little point in summarizing a book of more than 250 pages that reads longer that amounts to a leftist critical theorist circling the drain. In many ways, the author wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants to criticize certain sorts of cruelty while also pointing to certain types of cruelty as being worthwhile, even if there are no firm moral standards that she can use to differentiate between the sort of cruelty that she would approve of and one she would find to be tawdry and unpleasant. It is perhaps most entertaining (in a book that features little to entertain, admittedly) to read of the author’s struggle to maintain a reputation as being a civilized person in light of the cruelty that she appreciates in art and (sometimes foolishly) recommends to others. It appears as if the author has a widespread difficulty trying to relate to where other people stand and to make appropriate recommendations accordingly. Certainly her morality leaves little room to hold her in respect as being a person of high ethics and moral conduct, and her attempts to justify her own perspective are themselves as easy to criticize as the sort of art that she appreciates. This book, even beyond the title material itself, has some particularly unpleasant material in it, especially when towards the end of the book the author talks about how one particular black author had her daughter read highly disturbing material that hinted at rape and sexual abuse. If you are not disturbed and put off by this book’s contents, and even more by the author’s way of presenting it, you probably don’t have the sort of moral standards that I would respect anyway.