“Can a Reflection Be a Witness?”
A Review of Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Rating: 3.75/5
Bluets is not a typically formatted memoir in any way. At first, the form took some getting used to–each numbered paragraph reads like a single train of thought, and two paragraphs right next to each other may not be related in any clear way. However, once I got used to the form, I found myself realizing that the form is like a stream of consciousness. Sometimes our thoughts jump from one to the next, and they don’t need to relate to one another because they aren’t fully meant to be understood by others. The thoughts relate to Nelson, and we aren’t meant to fully understand them at the end of the day.
However, I think that what makes this most fit into the genre of memoir is the fact that, despite its non-linear and non-narrative form, the book consists of Nelson reflecting on her own experiences and life. Though it may not be as tradition of a narrative as The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, or contain memories clearly related to each other like Hunger by Roxane Gay, the story still captures a picture of Nelson’s mind at the time she was writing Bluets.
The quote that really strikes me from this book as defining how Nelson constructs her memoir is on page 35:
“she thinks sometimes we weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. (Can a reflection be a witness? Can one pass oneself the sponge wet with vinegar from a reed?)” (Nelson)
This quote captures what Nelson is doing: despite wanting to write a memoir around the color blue for ten years, she waited until she was in the midst of a heartbreak to actually write it. She waited until she wanted to witness her own despair, and then she chose to share what she witnessed with the world.
This idea of witnessing connects to a section later in the memoir where Nelson brings up several authors who regret sharing their personal memoirs, and then she leaps from there to speaking about forgetting. She is explaining on pages 77-79 why some of the sections of her memoir have less witnessing than others–if she writes something down, then she will only remember what she has written, as language and its imperfections will hold the memories, but she will begin to forget them. Only what is on the page is forever. I think this concept is really interesting and not something that I had thought about in reference to memoirs before.
The way Nelson plays with the form of her memoir to both share her experiences and also reflect on the act of writing memoir is really interesting. Though it wasn’t my favorite book this semester, I appreciate the way she took risks to express her reflections. She witnesses herself, and she shares it, and she is honest about the fact that she is sharing a reflection of herself.
While I loved these ideas, I won’t lie–I did not love reading this memoir. I don’t know what it was, but there was a sort of forced bluntness to some of the prose that irritated me. Sentences like “(that one part where I literally was like wtf)” really took me out of the memoir. The disjointed thought-flow narrative form was a choice that definitely had its positives, but as a whole I found it difficult to get into.
