Authoring Pain: Fragmentation and Autofiction in Maggie Nelson's Bluets

Abstract:

This article analyzes Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) as a prominent example of the fragmentary narration that can result from the experience of pain and loss. I demonstrate how Nelson's disparate ruminations on her obsession for the color blue, her heartbreak, and her quadriplegic friend's chronic pain defy the superimposition of a teleological plot over these experiences, in favor of episodic reading and sporadic not-knowing. Still, the autofictional nature of the text—with its alternatively overbearing and elusive authorial presence—challenges any naïve emotional investment in it. Focusing on Nelson's narration of her quadriplegic friend's experience of chronic pain, I conclude by highlighting how Bluets calls for a reconsideration of the reader's stance vis-à-vis the description of suffering, as well as of simplistic critical approaches to illness narratives as life-writing.