Bluets

Maggie Nelson’s style in Bluets is very unique and interesting. Reading each passage is almost like hearing her talk, where she interrupts herself and talks in fragments and goes off on tangents. What I like about her style is that you can almost hear the tone of her voice and feel her emotion. She’s very forward, especially when talking about her romantic relationship, and isn’t afraid to say exactly what she is thinking and feeling, which I find refreshing. She is talking to someone, or to many different people, throughout the book, which makes it feel as if I am having a conversation with her. For example, one of the passages says, “I admit that I may have been lonely. I know that loneliness can produce bolts of hot pain, a pain which, if it stays hot enough for long enough, can begin to simulate, or to provoke—take your pick—an apprehension of the divine. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.)” She interrupts herself to invite the audience to “take their pick” and uses second person pronouns. By doing this, she makes her stories more relatable for any reader. I wouldn’t think that I would enjoy a novel devoted to a color, but she interestingly relates everything back to the color blue, and it has a huge presence in her life.

This book seems to be a compilation of Nelson’s thoughts, almost like passages in a diary where she would write down a special thought or feeling that she would have throughout the day. She writes as if she is speaking to someone, and her thoughts are not planned out. It seems almost as though she is writing each word down as they come to her. She uses a lot of short sentences and even fragments. Some of her sentences are very abrupt and bold, which I think says something about her personality and gives me a sense of who she is. She seems like she would be a flighty person. I think at the time, or at one point in her life, she was at a strange and still spot where she was frustrated and trying to figure out who she was and what her purpose was. She seemed to be struggling in her relationships, even in her relationship to God, and was dealing with a lot of pain following her friend’s accident. She was writing down these thoughts and telling these stories in hopes of creating a sort of road map for herself that would lead her to peace. Throughout the book, she references many writers and puts herself in a sort of conversation with them. I think this is another way for her to deal with her emotions, by “talking” to people who deal with their problems in the same way she does. I also think that the color blue is supposed to represent something or someone in her life that was very important to her at the time.  At one point, she talks about a job interview where she was asked, “Why blue?” and she responded by saying that we don’t get to choose what we love. She’s talking about more than just a color.