Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, Maggie Nelson
Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, Maggie Nelson
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Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth

Author: Maggie Nelson

Narrator: Maggie Nelson

Unabridged: 1 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/01/2025


Synopsis

Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth is an experiment in interiority written in the pandemic studio. Something of a companion piece to 2009’s Bluets, Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life.

In scrupulously distilled prose, Pathemata offers a tragicomic portrait of a particularly unnerving and isolating moment in recent history, as well as an abiding account of how it feels to inhabit a mortal body in struggle to connect with others. Formally inspired by Hervé Guibert’s The Mausoleum of Lovers, and conceptually guided by Gilles Deleuze’s notion of artist as symptomologist, Pathemata is yet another urgent innovation from Maggie Nelson in the art of life-writing.

About The Author

Maggie Nelson is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. She first published Bluets with Wave Books in 2009 - in 2015, the book was named by Bookforum one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years; in 2024, it was adapted into an acclaimed play staged at the Royal Court Theater of London. Her other nonfiction titles include Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024), On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021; named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts (2015; named by the New York Times one of the top 100 books of the 21st Century), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011; named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2007), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (2007), and Jane: A Murder (2005). A 2016 MacArthur “genius” fellow, she currently teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles. Her newest book, Pathemata, or The Story of My Mouth, is forthcoming with Wave in April 2025.


Reviews

Goodreads review by leah on February 26, 2025

3.5 my first maggie nelson! i can’t believe i haven’t got around to reading her work before now, because her writing style is exactly up my street. from reading this we seem to have a few things in common - dealing with chronic pain, being sent to speech therapy as a child for talking too fast (a ha......more

Goodreads review by makayla on March 18, 2025

women suffering shouldn’t exist......more

Goodreads review by Annie Tate on March 17, 2025

Wow wow wow! Maggie Nelson is it. I love her. I love this. It feels very similar to Bluets in some ways but from a more grown up point of view. Nelson's writing is dreamy while also being incredibly grounded and cuts through me like a knife.......more

Goodreads review by Camille on April 14, 2025

If Maggie Nelson wrote a whole book about a dishwasher, I would Very Seriously read it.......more

Goodreads review by Arundhati on May 24, 2025

i initially struggled with the stream of conscious narrative style but i let myself get carried by her words and i am so glad i saw it till its end. so much about pain (physical and mental) is us being fixated on it and not enjoying the moments we have had before, after but especially between that p......more