‘Sometimes she publishes notes she’s scribbled on her hand’: Édouard Louis on 10 reasons to love Anne Carson
The French author discovered Carson on a bus while stranded in a snowstorm and has been enthralled by her fearless imagination ever since Where to start with Anne Carson ‘Delights await!’: Margaret Atwood and other writers on Nobel winner Anne Carson 1. Anne Carson is one of the greatest writers of our time. I discovered her work on a Peter Pan bus from New York to New England. I’d bought Antigonick in a bookstore a…
Key points
- Édouard Louis discovered Anne Carson's Antigonick on a bus during a 10-hour snowstorm and began translating it into French.
- Louis praises Carson for not trying to 'make literature' and for reinventing the book as an object.
- Carson told Louis, 'I prefer working. That way I don't have to think about the world. Or myself.'
French author Édouard Louis has written a tribute listing 10 reasons to love the Nobel-winning writer Anne Carson. Louis, who discovered Carson's work on a Peter Pan bus from New York to New England, said he was enthralled from the first lines of Antigonick, which he had bought almost randomly a few days earlier.
During that bus trip, a snowstorm left him and other passengers stranded for 10 hours in rural America. Louis took out his computer and spontaneously began translating Antigonick into French, so absorbed by Carson's text that he did not notice the hours pass.
Carson's approach to writing
Louis says that unlike many contemporary writers, Carson does not try to 'make literature'. She simply writes. In her work, clouds or monsters sometimes speak, and an imaginary Catherine Deneuve can take over the narration in the middle of a poetry collection.
She writes letters to her own sleep and sometimes publishes notes scribbled on her hand. Her subjects range from Homer to Rosalía, and from Brecht to Marilyn Monroe.
I prefer working. That way I don't have to think about the world. Or myself.
— Anne Carson
Reinventing the book and politics
Carson spurns the limits of what a book is. Float is several booklets in a plastic envelope, Nox is a box, and H of H Playbook is a wide rectangular facsimile impossible to shelve. Louis says many writers have tried to reinvent writing, but very few have reinvented the book-object itself.
Her formal inventiveness should not obscure the political dimension of her work. In Autobiography of Red, she tells the story of the monster killed by Hercules, placing herself with the defeated. In Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy become one character, subject to the same masculine violence and obligatory beauty.
