I'm reading Laura Kipnis's polemic Against Love. It's a welcome and enjoyable readerly investment after spending the last few weeks slogging through Steve Martin's A Thing of Beauty, a smugly namedropping view of the New York City art world of the 1990s and early aughts. Perhaps, upon further reflection, these two books should be snuggled up against one another, since after a few years within Chicago's art world it seems to me as though the conventions of marriage and the importance of fidelity have little import. Sure, remind me, it's art school. And I'll concede. Point taken.
But onto Kipnis's book.
Against Love is smart and funny and 60 exuberantly-read pages in, I'm ready to throw in the towel on love, too. Or at least any ideas I may have had of it. Kipnis is not only expertly deconstructing everything my happily married parents showed me, but playing with form. She likes to remind us of what a polemic is and true to what it defines she goes after love and marriage with a warrior-like vengeance, decimating certain cuddly conventions, and imbuing her arguments with the zing and zest and an intensely intensity of, well, love. For a girl like me, who took a class called "American Love & Marriage" in college and who is collecting wedding paraphernalia to cover the landlord white walls of her tiny carriage house, Kipnis is giving me plenty to consider.
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