Fluid Arguments (Nicole Brossard’s Essays in English; translated by Anne-Marie Wheeler)

With tantalizing titles like “Only a Body to Measure Reality By,” “Process of a Yes that moves its energy,” “On Hell,” “Are my tears universal?” and “Margin for Manoeuverability,” Nicole Brossard’s essays pull the reader into writing that is gentle, searching, and unflinching in its examination of ideas, issues, and life. The difficult line between reality and fiction, the question of writing in French or English, women authors, Djuna Barnes, strategies of lesbian writing, the sensuousness of language— these are among the topics approached and opened within Brossard’s philosophy in Fluid Arguments. Containing texts created between 1981 and the present, this book offers the first collection of Brossard’s work to include essays she wrote originally in English.

Mercury Press