Impossible Loves: Essays - Softcover

McNellis, Erin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983061106 ISBN 13: 9780983061106

Publisher: Rock Paper Tiger Press, 2011

Synopsis

“Possible loves – are for fools – The wise have – impossible loves,” reads a journal fragment from Christian mystic Simone Weil, whose life and works are examined here amid a seemingly unlikely assortment of topics. An argument for maintaining a reverence for commitment while rejecting a traditional, sentimental embrace of outmoded family structures becomes an inquiry into Weil’s drive toward self-sacrifice. A consideration of what Weil might have had in common with libertine and frequent critic Georges Bataille develops into a discussion of Timothy Treadwell, the tragic, grizzly-bear-enamored subject of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. Later, delving into the tradition of reticence in American poetry is brought into relief against the author’s own experience at Burning Man, where the beat never stops. Like a long discussion with a sharply intelligent friend, Impossible Loves moves effortlessly from topic to topic without ever losing its focus. “Nearly every paper in my academic career has the secret or not-so-secret message of ‘please, please try to love one another,’ and I think it would not be exaggerating to say that many, if not most, works of art have exactly this message as well,” McNellis writes, admitting in the same essay that “emotions are embarrassing.” Embarrassing, complex, even impossible though it may be, love is still the answer – but that doesn’t make the questions any less interesting.

About this title

About the Author

Erin McNellis received a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Irvine for her research on forms of attention in 20th-century American poetry. She blogs about poetry, ethics, and pop culture at uncomplicatedly.wordpress.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rock Paper Tiger Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0983061106
• ISBN 13: 9780983061106
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 104