“It's Not Giving Homer”: Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn on Anne Carson

00:00:00: Hi Lauren.

00:00:00: Hi Tobias!

00:00:01: It's been

00:00:01: a while.

00:00:02: I know it is too long.

00:00:03: What have you went up to?

00:00:05: Suffering

00:00:06: Suffering, oh my god.

00:00:07: this

00:00:08: brings us the poet of day Yes

00:00:11: or The Poet Of Art Of

00:00:13: All Time.

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00:01:04: In October, the Swedish Academy awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature to Uncarcinne for her bold and inventive over that in playful dialogue with a classical tradition has created new forms of contemporary literature.

00:01:21: For many, un-Karson receiving the Nobel Prize was not a surprise.

00:01:25: Her dozens of essays poems and novels have been translated around the world in one numerous awards.

00:01:30: at seventy six she has been called One Of The World's Greatest Living Poets.

00:01:36: Carson was born in Toronto then grew up in small towns across Canada.

00:01:40: She went on to teach classics at universities including McGill, Princeton and NYU.

00:01:45: And she now spends part of the year in Iceland where when The Call from Swedish Academy came... ...she was apparently listening to the wind!

00:01:54: Over a weekend my co-host Lauren Euler and I read some of Carson's best known work like autobiography of Redd….

00:02:00: …the Glass Essay –The Beauty Of The Husband–and her recent essay In London Reviews Books about living with Parkinson's.

00:02:07: We've had a sprawling conversation about what Carson does to the Greek myth, how easy it is to lose track of what's real while reading her.

00:02:14: Why Emily Bronte inspired her to write one of the most quoted breakup poems in English language.

00:02:20: and what a scorpion has been doing on his arm so far... As a warning we did make some mistakes along that way but in Uncarson's world thats part of our experience.

00:02:32: Enjoy your conversations!

00:02:34: The good thing with the Nobel Prize You can always be open about not having read them, isn't that

00:02:41: true?

00:02:42: I would say in my world.

00:02:44: Not having read Ann Carson is a little bit embarrassing.

00:02:47: Yeah

00:02:49: She's very well known and the English-speaking literary world Often declared to be like the greatest living poet things of this nature And in my world, it's very popular to bet on who is gonna win the Nobel Prize every year.

00:03:12: She has always got good odds...

00:03:13: Has been for a couple of

00:03:15: years?

00:03:15: For awhile!

00:03:16: Like long time.

00:03:17: yeah and To be honest I have not disappointed at the Nobel prize in last few years but i get dissapointed because of them, after all the winners.

00:03:30: And I would like to be introduced... To someone new?

00:03:34: An author that i've never heard from an interesting slightly off-the-beaten path country.

00:03:42: but unfortunately English

00:03:44: is a

00:03:45: demonic language.

00:03:46: Last

00:03:47: weekend we both I took this very seriously and read a number of uncarsened books or texts, tried to get grasp on what she is really doing.

00:03:59: We had some preconceptions about her as being also a translator... She has authored the now canonical translation of sapfo in English for example.

00:04:19: Okay, thanks for that correction.

00:04:21: Yeah so you said to me in preparation... I only read the books and also on the internet.

00:04:31: So there were some reactions to her winning.

00:04:36: What was the vibe?

00:04:37: Well like i said In The English-speaking literary world everyone is like great pick!

00:04:41: Wow she's great.

00:04:42: And um..I think too Like any or no She has some really die-hard female, younger female fans and Carcindas including like several of my friends who revealed themselves to me over the course of the last few days.

00:04:58: And I think she has a broad reach... ...and she has like a lot of these kind of fans in intellectual women—like younger intellectual woman—who really connect with all the love and heart break and like gender themes in her work.

00:05:21: But of course she's also a class assist, um...and we didn't podcast over the summer but classics and Ancient Greece in particular were often- I don't know if you want to see it?

00:05:32: ...in The Discourse on the news And this led to lots of right wing sometimes bot related lamenting about Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and the liberties he takes with The Odyssey.

00:05:53: And I think once, and Carson won of course none of these people had ever heard her or read her work but then you know she was in the news.

00:06:02: People care about the Nobel Prize.

00:06:07: there is, at least in the United States a sub-genre of culture war.

00:06:12: that's about how literature these days is really bad and we need to get back classic novels.

00:06:20: Why can't anyone just write a real poem?

00:06:22: Yeah but she has a woman.

00:06:31: As an academic, you could classify her as a classicist.

00:06:33: But I would say like as an author or writer.

00:06:36: she's a post-modernist and She is woman who wears the suit alot of time relationships and love in a quite interesting way.

00:06:49: But because she is post-modern female poet who has blending forms, these right wing people on the internet like bloggers just learned what poetry was yesterday got really mad that she had won.

00:07:04: they were blogging.

00:07:05: there are some tweets or blogs all very.

00:07:12: But it was interesting to see people rally around this news item, because I do think that there's some life in literary culture if right-wing people are still getting worked up about these kind of things.

00:07:29: So we're looking at an over of about twenty books, right?

00:07:33: I feel like it's

00:07:33: hard to count.

00:07:34: And the one thing that always comes up is she's mixing genres... She's writing poetry and she's writing in verse ...she's writing essays with line breaks or in verse.

00:07:45: She's also writing normal prose sometimes for some of her essays.

00:07:51: So you should distinguish between.

00:07:52: there are poems called essays so they're verses, essays and verses.

00:07:58: Her probably most famous work is Autobiography of Red, which we have here.

00:08:03: And that is a verse novel.

00:08:07: but she also has like regular essays and some what would be called prose poetry.

00:08:13: But if you just kind of isolated the paragraph it'd probably mostly indistinguishable from slightly kooky essay.

00:08:20: So yeah... She does what she does.

00:08:24: Yeah, we want to start with autobiography read because it's her sort of most well-known Most popular book and lots of people are like that book changed my life.

00:08:31: yeah We can talk about it.

00:08:33: It is you mention her as a postmodern writer and what she would see.

00:08:39: if you open the book, You get a reader forward.

00:08:42: And then there's some bunch of fragments from this Greek writer From six hundred fifty bc whose name I even have to believe it.

00:08:51: so you Have like all sorts of appendix.

00:08:54: The Book starts with Like five or Six Appendixes and Then you Get To the core Of It.

00:09:00: With Which Is the novel?

00:09:01: in A novel Inverse autobiography read a story Gareon, who is also one of the heroes... ...of one of The Poems by Stasikurus I think.

00:09:11: Stasikkurus?

00:09:12: I believe he's a translator or a scribe or something...?

00:09:15: No

00:09:16: it's the poet!

00:09:18: But no its in Heracles though It's the myth.

00:09:22: we need to cut this out

00:09:25: In fragments of.

00:09:25: Stasicurus starts with the first poem called Gareone.

00:09:29: Yeah okay i see..i see..I THOUGHT you were talking about.

00:09:34: You're using the title that she uses.

00:09:36: I thought you were talking about some kind of ancient Greek fragments that exist, but she is making these up.

00:09:43: It's all made-up.

00:09:45: Let's just go back for a second.

00:09:46: So what does Ann Carson do with myth?

00:09:50: Greek myth or with Greek poetry.

00:09:54: She plays with it.

00:09:57: so What you get in this book is not something that you could go to a party and say, ah I read about Jarian in this Ann Carson book.

00:10:09: And i'm going to tell the myth or it's like part of The Hercules' story.

00:10:14: This would get you in trouble with pedants.

00:10:18: um...this is not a faithful retelling of Jarians uh..I think relatively small role Jumping off point, but you know that as soon as we start reading because it's like they're there speaking in like kind of contemporary dialogue and he is a photographer.

00:10:38: And here Heracles becomes his slightly older lover.

00:10:44: And heracles does destroy him.

00:10:46: But its'a really loose interpretation Of what happens In this myth.

00:10:53: This Is What Ann Carson Frequently Doing With texts with her intertexts taking them and kind of fucking around with him as it were.

00:11:02: So...

00:11:04: Yes, then we get into the actual autobiography which tells a story of young boy who's living with his mother and meets a guy named Heracles and falls in love.

00:11:26: fateful

00:11:27: romance is what it's called here.

00:11:30: What's interesting about and the reason why so beloved?

00:11:32: Is that its like a coming of eight a queer coming-of-age story, right yeah And it's pretty like easy to read.

00:11:38: I would say It's obviously we just had difficulty explaining The form of it but that isn't like the plot.

00:11:45: That's sort of makes it Interesting because if it were justice story Of this teenage boy Moving at home with his mom, I remember there's an image of his mother smoking ashing cigarette into the sink inside while she was talking to him about where is he going tonight.

00:12:01: And like you know it would just be kind a normal teenage gay love story.

00:12:09: um...with some weird names but the appendices, and there's a fake interview in the back with Stasigoras who is very elliptical.

00:12:22: And it also sort of... The timeline as kind of present day when we're transcending normal time they go to Hades at one point to meet Heracles' family.

00:12:39: Isn't there like long passage about a photograph of the mother that was taken in like nineteen twenty-three and it takes you back to a different time.

00:12:46: Yeah, I think so yeah there's layers of time...

00:12:52: And the young boy Gary on his writing is working on this autobiography which he starts at very young age even before being able Drawings he makes and then it becomes a photo essay or something like that.

00:13:11: So we have all these themes, and they evolve over A hundred fifty pages more less And its already in verse

00:13:19: I think what autobiography of red like best illustrates because it's her most popular work.

00:13:24: It like illustrates the like That there are various levels that you can kind of interact with her work.

00:13:32: and You know, we just had this kind of who's on first dialogue where?

00:13:35: We were like not understanding if we were talking about the book or if we're talking About The myth or we don't.

00:13:39: even you know neither of us is particularly well versed in ancient Greek myth And There's still time.

00:13:50: There's always still time.

00:13:52: I think You know not skip over it, but if you don't know about that.

00:13:59: It's not like a prohibitive thing.

00:14:02: It doesn't prohibit you from like getting something meaningful and something like seriously literary out of the work even If you're like.

00:14:08: I don't anything about this yes.

00:14:10: But it does also Kind of relate to I think like a little bit of a problem with her work or A way in which her work is problematic in the academic sense.

00:14:23: Which Is That Or Like This?

00:14:27: something interesting about postmodern literature in general, which is that when you're working with like lots of different historical references and your playing with them.

00:14:36: And you are changing them!

00:14:38: You are asserting there's no stable meaning or hierarchy as we do in Post-Modern Literature...you kind of run the risk especially now where a lot So literate as they once were of like Getting into the historical novel situation where you're like.

00:14:59: I made this up and people think it's true.

00:15:01: And what was in nineteen

00:15:02: ninety eight?

00:15:03: Yeah, but i'm saying that People love It now.

00:15:05: They are going to be Like.

00:15:06: This is What Heracles Is About.

00:15:09: You can't actually learn very much about Ancient Greece from these texts.

00:15:14: She's using ancient greece for her own devices basically And I think too, there's something interesting about it because her translations from Ancient Greek have a similarly loose quality that obviously I cannot assess.

00:15:34: Because i don't read ancient greek.

00:15:37: but you know if you read any criticism of There are a couple of pieces by Emily Wilson, the translator of Homer.

00:15:50: Um there were very long reviews and Carson in general And she will take some issues.

00:15:59: She still respects her.

00:16:00: I think that doesn't even know how to read from like contemporary angle But as classist you know...she's making really interesting choices As a translator.

00:16:11: So far they're wrong.

00:16:14: But she will say like, well this is just not.

00:16:17: there's no way to say that.

00:16:18: This was what it says and the best example of this Is in her safo translations where sometimes?

00:16:24: She changes the lesbian relationship or the she pronoun to a he And at this is Ann Carson and Emily Wilson is like whoa Like.

00:16:33: It's Just Not True is it like actually like?

00:16:35: it isn't important That it's two women ladies.

00:16:37: this woman um and I think this to me, like I think if you don't know any of her poetry and haven't read her work.

00:16:50: This could make you kind of have an alarm bell.

00:16:55: all these women doesn't what she's talking about?

00:16:57: but actually If You Read several of Her Poems particularly if you read them in quick succession as we did will hopefully see that part one of the things that she does is, takes a historical text and really uses it for her own purposes.

00:17:20: And she does this with the Bronte sisters.

00:17:23: He does this With John Keats, a romantic poet and it's not like... She is kind of creating space for possibility in which to imagine or that she uses these things For lack of better word inspiration.

00:17:40: But

00:17:40: I think there something interesting too on Peck also around The way she formally uses references in literature.

00:17:46: You mentioned her whatever, post-modern or post structuralist lineage and so forth.

00:17:52: It's also visible in the quotes.

00:17:54: um uh or in the reference that she sort of like uses it in the forward where she quotes Derridaa and Baudrillard and things like which you wouldn't necessarily expect from a classicist?

00:18:04: Yeah!

00:18:04: She seems like she doesn't like answering questions...she just understands why they're being asked questions.

00:18:08: And I think there is this video clip with her going around at National Book Awards in recent memory.

00:18:18: So, what contemporary books do you like?

00:18:22: And she's like oh I'm a classicist so...I don't really read contemporary books.

00:18:29: Even in these older interviews with this guy Michael Silverblatt he is like who would consider your influences?

00:18:37: and well i am the classicist.

00:18:41: And he's like, well it's not really very much like Homer is it though?

00:18:45: It doesn't look like Homer.

00:18:48: The vibe isn't giving Homer.

00:18:51: and she's like... Well I guess Sophocles was a little bit younger or more contemporary.

00:18:56: He said could you have anyone more recent!

00:18:58: She says no but.... She's obfuscating because got an incredibly broad range of reference.

00:19:08: You think the insistence on the classes?

00:19:12: this is a bit of a pose here.

00:19:13: Yeah,

00:19:14: yeah

00:19:15: it's a cute pose but or maybe it's like how she identifies right.

00:19:19: um because she has uh quite charming story about how she got into the classics.

00:19:26: I think was her latin teacher sort of agreed to teach her ancient greek during lunch and she just fell in love with it.

00:19:34: and there's another interview.

00:19:35: i can't remember where this is from...but What do you like about ancient

00:19:41: Greek?".

00:19:42: And she says, it's just the best language.

00:19:45: They're like what?

00:19:46: Do you mean by that?

00:19:47: and she is like oh I don't know!

00:19:50: It's all i can say...it' s a BEST LANGUAGE!

00:19:53: You are like okay cool so..I think there some attachment to this influence.

00:20:04: obviously its very present but theres lots of other stuff in there.

00:20:10: Like, I think she has a lot in common with the metaphysical poets which is like John Dunn and Andrew Marvell on these guys from late fifteen hundreds early sixteen hundred's in England.

00:20:23: She also you know we've been talking about postmodernism.

00:20:25: She reading In The Beauty Of The Husband it kind of organized more obscure John Keats citations?

00:20:34: Yes.

00:20:35: And she's doing lots of like archival work, it's very clear... She is reading different versions of Keats' copy of Paradise Lost and looking at his notes.

00:20:46: you know!

00:20:46: Yeah..she's also very attached to typography in a certain way because the way books are structured is re-enacting all conventions on all the appendices.

00:21:01: playing with the, with a para-textual envelope of other texts is always very present.

00:21:07: It's postmodernism!

00:21:09: I just feel it so funny... I'm really on a postmodern kick because she...I just did piece an American sort story author Donald Bartholme and actually you can see lots of similarities between her and Donald Barthaume as well like really a lot.

00:21:25: And it has like lots of like, you know appendices You know different forms.

00:21:29: But what kind of form's?

00:21:30: like academic for my right?

00:21:31: Like an appendicee and an appendix is in academic form.

00:21:35: I'm like the The archive isn't academic forum.

00:21:39: So I think actually she sells herself short a little bit when she's like i'm a classic because to me like I didn't necessarily.

00:21:47: I wasn't so compelled by her Because Everyone describes her in this like Oh, she's a classicist who writes poetry.

00:21:56: Like love poetry you know?

00:21:58: And maybe there is little bit of sexism in that.

00:22:00: but I also think it has her own self-fashioning and like to me they are just much richer.

00:22:08: now which strikes me as this?

00:22:10: all very nineteen nineties.

00:22:11: so the books we looked at and most famous ones autobiography read its from i think nineteen ninety eight And then The Beauty of the Husband, I think it's from two thousand

00:22:25: and

00:22:25: one.

00:22:26: So this is all like

00:22:27: that.

00:22:28: one was from nineteen

00:22:29: ninety four.

00:22:31: in another one i read as a gender of sound which is for nineteen ninety-two.

00:22:36: so you have these like the queer reading As It Were Of Autobiography of Red because its too it's a romance between uh... Two and Then Later Three Men um.. The Gender of Sound.

00:22:49: obviously as is in the title, it's sort of like an important text for gender theory or this kind of literary studies.

00:22:58: But its all from the nineteen nineties.

00:23:00: so form a period thought and discourse and criticism that has now almost forty years ago.

00:23:11: oh my god!

00:23:12: This how far we got but... It interesting people connect back to Uncarson.

00:23:22: Of course, Uncarsen also kept writing.

00:23:24: she's still active you know as late this summer I think she published an essay on Rosalia so she was just taking on pop cultural... Well

00:23:32: that is the gender of sound!

00:23:34: ...topics and exactly.

00:23:37: but isn't there like...?

00:23:39: But

00:23:39: it's very nineties?

00:23:41: Isn't there....I found her not necessarily the gender of sound, but in The Beauty Of The Husband most of all and also In The Glass Essay when she speaks about gender relationships.

00:23:54: She's deconstructing marriage from point-of-view... ...of a woman who has been cheated on or left

00:24:04: etc.,

00:24:05: it is about divorce But she stays in these extremely classical gendered roles And doesn't really transgress

00:24:12: them.

00:24:13: Yeah I mean It's interesting, it is a hard topic to get into.

00:24:20: I mean like what...I think we were sort of talking before about how she was very accessible and popular but then actually you know getting in kind of like nitty-gritty literary theory stuff.

00:24:33: this is really confusing and should be inaccessible.

00:24:36: But the reading

00:24:38: experience is demanding because It's the kind of literature where you work under the assumption that everything on page has a really deep meaning.

00:24:48: You're supposed to deconstruct it, I think?

00:24:50: Yes!

00:24:51: Ideally for deconstruction... And

00:24:53: in many instances ...it does.

00:24:57: The first thing i read was the first poem and sort of like I had to let it sink in.

00:25:05: And then read again, and unreaded again...and got into a loop where i'm just reading this poem twenty-five times on auto repeat In A Row Just To Uncover While I'm Reading The Different Layers.

00:25:21: Yeah!

00:25:22: That's really what is pleasurable about it.

00:25:23: but also think that there are you know why she so popular with gender thing?

00:25:28: Why do some women like her?

00:25:30: Um, I think it's because she does kind of represent... She represents like a just sort-of not fatalistic.

00:25:39: It is quite pessimistic about being in the female body and um.. In the female structure as it were.

00:25:49: And even if she doesn't want to be Right?

00:25:51: I think there's some, like one of these New Yorker poem little snippets that was going around on the internet.

00:25:58: It is something like...I don't want to be a woman!

00:26:00: I wanna be unbearable or whatever.

00:26:02: And she resents her leg-like.. I can't remember what lines are but why do i have legs?

00:26:07: basically and the legs are gendered.

00:26:10: for Ann Carson specifically There're some gendered legs.

00:26:14: Yeah

00:26:14: yeah yeah But shes still.

00:26:17: I don't want to say it's hetero-pessimistic because she is very hetero, i think.

00:26:24: But all of her sort of female

00:26:29: poets or female protagonists

00:26:31: and these works that we're specifically talking about are in the wife...it's The Wife!

00:26:36: It's the girlfriend, its'The Wife', And That means a pretty stable set.

00:26:43: So she just doesn't want it to be a stable set of things, right?

00:26:45: And I think the reason why autobiography of red is so popular Is that- It's also kind of like uh...it's pretty gendered.

00:26:55: Even though its between two boys.

00:26:57: but the gerion isn't in this sort female position.

00:27:01: But i think..its very relatable because thats where most people are at.

00:27:10: I also know, just because we were talking about the nineties.

00:27:12: when we're talking About the Nineties and We're Talking About Sort of The Popular Culture Around This Book Autobiography Of Red Is Like A Feature On An Episode Of The L Word.

00:27:21: The Lesbian Nineties Show?

00:27:24: A Drama I Guess TV Show Which i only Know From The Discourse Around This book The Last Week Or Whatever But One Of The Girl...I Don't Know The Characters.

00:27:37: Do you know Autobiography of Red?

00:27:38: And the other one's like, it's my favorite book.

00:27:41: So kind of a pansexual... She has a pan-sexual appeal.

00:27:47: in fact I would say You're A Straight Man and you also were reading parts of that book twenty five times.

00:27:53: not Autobiographie Of Red but Beauty With The Husband no?

00:27:56: Of course yeah nobody does.

00:27:59: It Also Has and That'S Also The Quality Of It many

00:28:03: more

00:28:05: aspects to it.

00:28:06: I, for example in autobiography of red i was really struck by descriptions of landscape... ...of youth not necessarily sort-of like in a sexualized way but just its very touching to read about this young character who grows up goes out into the world.

00:28:27: This is very universal and it's appeal

00:28:30: Yeah Gets his heart broken.

00:28:33: Yes, exactly.

00:28:34: Yeah so you have landscape and heartbreak the glass essay a very beloved breakup

00:28:42: poem?

00:28:42: Absolutely this was my... This and The Beauty of the Husband are where my favorite things I discovered about her work.

00:28:50: What do you like about it?

00:28:52: Um i think they're there.

00:28:54: It's very easy to read them together because on the topic of loss Well, the Beauty of The Husband is about both marriage then being separated not divorced.

00:29:10: Then being divorced but still somehow unable to cut the ties.

00:29:15: so we walk through like a longer period off-the relationship between... ...the one who's always only called husband in In The Beauty Of The Huspand and narrator.

00:29:26: And interestingly I mean We are so conditioned today Again, this is literature from the nineteen nineties.

00:29:32: We're so conditioned today to obviously sort of like identify The voice in the poem or in the novel with uh...the author.

00:29:42: So we would very naturally assume oh!

00:29:44: This must be auto-fictional.

00:29:45: Oh!!This

00:29:46: Must Be About Uncarson's own marriage and experience Whereas I think In the Nineteen Nineties.

00:29:54: To The Contemporary Reader I would hesitate.

00:29:58: Yes, automatic

00:29:59: association?

00:30:00: I would caution you against romanticizing the nineteen nineties because i listened to an interview with Ann Carson that this very beloved literary interview Michael Silverblatt did for his show Bookworm and I believe this interviews from nineteen ninety seven And they were talking about The Glass Essay but they were talking about the, she had a couple books come out at that time and he was saying sort of oh you know.

00:30:33: Of course like a lot of this is autobiographical um... But we don't feel so compelled to say so.

00:30:41: And well I find her voice increasingly charming.

00:30:47: At first i found it quite irritating North American mid-century north american woman voice And she was like oh well.

00:30:59: Yeah, of course I mean you know You're using things from your life.

00:31:05: but um you?

00:31:08: You got to make it interesting.

00:31:09: so you don't want to say like everything you had for breakfast, you know.

00:31:12: and she has this very Almost like denialist like a very sort Simple.

00:31:21: Oh gee, I don't know she has this very simple way of doing interviews.

00:31:26: She's not citing a lot It's it's not the sort of barrage of references.

00:31:31: He certainly not talking like you know Like I am which is so very fast kind of like New York style way of talking and And but it kind of belies like The actual complexity of that they'll work.

00:31:46: But i don't think that she started denying And poetry is kind of irrelevant as well, I think in general like you know some people have made a saucy argument that all poetry is auto-fiction.

00:31:58: Often when we speak about the poet not just the poet who's the author so it doesn't...it kinda matters less also because audience for poetry has always been much smaller.

00:32:12: So People are more able to separate or allow of the I in a poem to be, it would-.

00:32:23: But

00:32:23: I think that general assumption if you read this today is clearly okay.

00:32:27: She must speak from living experience.

00:32:28: This must be about her most of all and i think That was less The case In um...in the nineteen nineties.

00:32:34: Why?

00:32:35: What?

00:32:37: why

00:32:37: Tobias?!

00:32:37: I don't understand!

00:32:41: I think because the notion Of fiction Was much more Uncontested than..I Think we've been.

00:32:47: I think your doing Presentism

00:32:50: Okay, we can't time travel back.

00:32:55: I think it doesn't really matter to me maybe like people respond in general much more a woman writing from her first person point of view because i think its real and that is what It Is.

00:33:15: so it Doesn't Really Matter.

00:33:16: but In the Glass essay in particular, she is... it's kind of an- It IS an essay.

00:33:29: So sometimes you'll call things like a fictional essay.

00:33:32: I don't know if that's how she refers to The Glass Essay but there's-

00:33:35: Oh!

00:33:35: She says that A Fictional Essay and Twenty Nine Tangoes is what she said was written on cover?

00:33:40: Yeah

00:33:40: so her formal play the use of memoir or autobiography.

00:33:49: But what I wanted to say as well in The Glasses, same particular is that um...the speaker uh..The Eye has gone to her mother's house and she has brought her collected works of Emily Bronte-her favorite author with her in order to grieve getting brutally dumped by a guy that she was with for five years now.

00:34:13: um...Emily Bronte died when she was thirty-one or thirty four, I can't remember.

00:34:18: So...she's like doing this kind of doubling and she is kinda projecting herself into the life of Emily Bronte a lot of time even though shes also doing quite interesting literary criticism within With the narrative of the breakup and her memories of the break up And also these kind of horrific vision dream visions that she's having in response to The breakup that are obviously inflected by some Of the imagery of the Moors In England which if you've ever read the Brontes, You know about the moors That's the landscape on Which like all this kind of stuff is happening.

00:34:51: So there's Like an intentional Kind of it's not quite fictionalization.

00:34:58: What the point I want to make.

00:35:00: but It is like a kind of not forcing, but um She's like reading her own life through Emily Bronte as opposed to reading Emily Brante Through Her Own Life.

00:35:11: this This Speaker Of The Poem and you know And Carson probably was doing that, she's probably true.

00:35:22: So it doesn't really matter.

00:35:25: the point is It Doesn't Really Matter.

00:35:26: and also because there's this kind of conflation or this like analogizing...it creates in The Same Way That Her Use Of Myth Or Classical References Like Creates Misdirection Say About What'S True & What'S Not True?

00:35:45: Quote-unquote

00:35:47: I mean, you mentioned Keats who is a sort of like threat that runs through the beauty of the husband.

00:35:52: because it's all these quotations of Keats that are interjecting between different chapters.

00:35:58: And in The Glass Essay its quotes by Emily Bronte and what i've found interesting...

00:36:05: Wait not just to Emily Brontë?

00:36:06: Because this important to Anne Carson It Is Emily Bronta and Charlotte Bronte's introductions & commentary on Emily Brontoe work.

00:36:15: So Charlotte Bronte's hand in editing Emily Brontes who died and I don't know, Charlotte then edited her work.

00:36:26: Is that the story?

00:36:26: Yeah!

00:36:27: And wrote sort of a professor introduction to something.

00:36:30: but my favorite thing is how she describes Charlotte Bronta tone.

00:36:38: And she said it's a publicist dream.

00:36:44: Oh, yeah and she describes it like She says he has the tone of someone who is very carefully not looking at a scorpion that Is on the arm of the sofa?

00:36:56: Like it's just a great image.

00:36:59: It's really good.

00:37:03: Yeah About how we deal with The pain of others Right?

00:37:12: And the pain of oneself.

00:37:13: Yeah, but she's talking about her sister's pain right like Charlotte Bronte.

00:37:16: The tone is Charlotte Brontë Her sister talking about your dead sisters Emily's Poems.

00:37:24: Poems about.

00:37:26: I don't know if it's separation or disappointment But She does have an issue...she has a lot of anger About the man She loved and in some way destroyed her.

00:37:40: That's the Emily Bronte quotation.

00:37:47: She barely went outside?

00:37:48: We don't know if

00:37:49: she even had one, yeah!

00:37:51: That is true.

00:37:53: and Carson writes about the consensus that she actually never was really with a man.

00:37:59: so it supposedly platonic love has been disappointed.

00:38:05: but like again... doesn't really matter because here Ann Carson's ex-boyfriend, the speaker of the poem The Anne Carson Avatar, their ex boyfriend is...

00:38:20: Is called

00:38:21: Law.

00:38:22: He's instantiated as a man but she calls him law and you know there could be God.

00:38:33: Could he someone else?

00:38:35: Yeah But this one passage where she speaks about Anger, it's here yeah.

00:38:42: Anger travels through me pushes aside everything else in my heart pouring up the vents.

00:38:46: every night I wake to this anger etc.

00:38:51: and then she quotes Emily Bronte who is sort of like hurling at this man though.

00:39:07: Okay, so thou sorry my pronunciation.

00:39:11: Well though well thou halt paid me back My love.

00:39:18: But if there be a God above Whose arm is strong whose word Is true this hell shall ring thy spirit to.

00:39:27: There go deceiver Go.

00:39:28: my hand is streaming wet my heart's blood flows To buy the blessing too.

00:39:33: forget O could that lost heart give back, Back again to thine?

00:39:38: One-tenth part of the pain That clouds my dark decline.

00:39:43: Vain words, vain frenzied thoughts.

00:39:46: No ear can hear me call Lost in the vacant air.

00:39:49: My frantic curses fall Unconquered In my soul.

00:39:53: The tyrant rules Me still.

00:39:55: Life bows To my control But love I cannot kill.

00:40:00: So that's Emily Bronte.

00:40:02: Yeah, but you're

00:40:02: doing the same thing?

00:40:04: That you were just criticizing The Readers of Today?

00:40:07: No and we have this thread.

00:40:11: it is also through I mean the other book We Discussing Getting Over Someone Who Broke Your Heart Anyway.

00:40:23: And Emily Brontë who always not showing up whatever.

00:40:27: and Emily Brantë Reaction is anger.

00:40:31: and what Ankarsten writes, her anger is a puzzle.

00:40:36: It raises many questions in me to see love treated with such cold and knowing

00:40:41: content.".

00:40:45: And this motive of sort-of like disappointed love... ...and then how you react?

00:40:50: it's also very central to The Beauty Of The Husband which opens.

00:40:57: I have all the quotes ready.

00:41:00: Very early on she says, you know... She speaks about how she's been in love and together with a man from young age to early middle-age.

00:41:16: And then however ...I can't find quote now but However The Marriage Ends With Like A Letter In The Mail.

00:41:22: And so it's this whole theme like the man who is unfaithful, who was cheating on her.

00:41:27: Who is leaving her?

00:41:29: Who is nevertheless trying to stay connected to her... ...who isn't sort of an abusive and we would say toxic relationship to her.

00:41:38: Yet the protagonist or narrator or voice cannot really cut loose and get over him.

00:41:46: The reason why-

00:41:47: It because he's so hot!

00:41:49: Because he's beautiful.

00:41:50: Yeah

00:41:53: So the whole book goes on for like a hundred and twenty pages of poems actually telling that it's The Beauty Of The Husband, And She Just Cannot Resist.

00:42:04: Well what does that have to do with Emily Bronte's anger?

00:42:08: I haven't... she comes to Emily Brontë in sort-of Like With This Puzzlement About Her Anger of love wasn't physical in the way that hers was, because she's entrapped with the beauty of her husband and also with a sexual element which is so strong throughout.

00:42:37: Yes?

00:42:38: So wait you're saying sex prevents women from feeling truly angry...

00:42:44: No!

00:42:44: That isn't exactly what I'm talking

00:42:46: about.

00:42:47: In the glasses they say it's just more angry flaying her flash and stuff.

00:42:53: But what are you saying?

00:42:58: Well, I'm saying is that ultimately from beginning to end in the beauty of The Husband she sort-of like can't get over What's She Calleds The Beauty.

00:43:07: but it also has a lot To do with Like The Urges Of The Flash And so she doesn't fully condemn The Hus band.

00:43:16: Ultimately Because She Is So Intrapped By by his attraction,

00:43:21: and this

00:43:21: goes through until the very end.

00:43:24: The husband loves her?

00:43:24: Yeah

00:43:24: but he's still...

00:43:26: And even at the end is writing a letter like three or he's telling his friend three years later He's like I want to go back to her.

00:43:30: always love.

00:43:31: turning the friend is like what are you talking about?

00:43:33: leave her alone?

00:43:37: that husband, but he's like I always left her.

00:43:39: you know whatever.

00:43:39: But in the glass essay she just gets brutally dumbed.

00:43:42: after five years they- it's just like five years.

00:43:45: He comes to her and says That relationship is over And what?

00:43:49: She said not enough spin on it Which was a golf metaphor or maybe tennis but definitely if the ball doesn't have enough spin It won't go very far At which point?

00:44:00: this also a funny part of his power.

00:44:04: But the speaker is like tries to touch his hand and he says, no.

00:44:11: I would love to find a quote.

00:44:13: He's just like...I don't want be sexual with you.

00:44:16: Everything gets too crazy.

00:44:17: And she said yes everything get too crazy.

00:44:20: She was taking off her clothes but i think in essay particular Which can relate actually to beauty.

00:44:26: Emily Bronte is a watcher.

00:44:30: She misspells this word, it could be weather what she means to write but she spells W-H-A-C-E-R.

00:44:39: I think basically its some kind of spiritual watching like surveilling looking.

00:44:44: that's at least how Ian Carson uses it.

00:44:46: um... But shes'a watched or shes watching, shes watches.

00:44:51: This of course relates to beauty right?

00:44:56: Because what she's watching and looking at the husband, his primary appeal is like... His beauty.

00:45:07: And he's a painter!

00:45:08: He doesn't mean it-

00:45:09: The painter is the gay friend of the husband.

00:45:12: What does the husband do?

00:45:13: I think as a writer or we don't really know.. He's traveling to Buenos Aires To New York Potentially giving conferences Publishing stuff in small literary magazines.

00:45:21: Are you just making that up?

00:45:23: No

00:45:23: no

00:45:25: We just keep making errors.

00:45:28: Like Emily Bronte... Yeah, you're like is it this?

00:45:34: Is that...?

00:45:36: But its fine!

00:45:37: You just incorporate-.

00:45:38: there's also a wonderful part in the beauty of The Husband speaking of errors us making errors.

00:45:46: There was something towards the end where they were having conversation and the speaker said she thought what happened in medieval manuscripts when the scribe made a mistake, made an error and then the illuminator would like garland it with roses.

00:46:04: And have little devil pulling off of page yeah but also- A strong image.

00:46:08: Of course It's wonderful image But you could say that whole marriage is an error right?

00:46:15: Like its failure.

00:46:18: all the key stuff she's quoting about error and fall Keats' notes on Paradise Lost, about a major error.

00:46:28: Okay so to sum up...

00:46:30: But Tobias did you have an emotional response to these works?

00:46:35: I did but it's hard to sort of like memorize and keep it lasting.

00:46:49: There's this aha moment when you sort of read a fantastic line and get struck by the line, as it were.

00:46:59: But then there... You have one on every page almost so I found that little bit difficult to have these things build into like larger momentum.

00:47:12: My response was several, like precise passages was very strong and beautiful but it's always sort of these flash images.

00:47:21: Yeah that is a problem with poetry you know?

00:47:24: Yes speaking about emotional responses I'm really touched by the female voice especially in The Beauty Of The Husband By her longing.

00:47:41: Also, I keep wondering why does she accept all these things?

00:47:45: So it's really a deep form of love.

00:47:51: What?

00:47:52: because she accepts pain

00:47:54: Because she accepts you know being lied to.

00:47:57: She accepts not knowing where he is.

00:47:59: All this like hyper classical tropes of abusive relationships that You would associate with the twentieth century.

00:48:09: or Because we think we have overcome maybe these things.

00:48:13: I found it really touching.

00:48:14: Oh, yeah well i mean It also relates to Roland Barth the lover and the beloved.

00:48:22: But so this essay about Parkinson's that she has in the LRB is called beware The man whose handwriting sways like a reed-in-the-wind.

00:48:31: And She begins with very post structural idea.

00:48:34: She says I've always thought of hand writing as way to organize thoughts into shapes.

00:48:39: And this is of course about form, and then you know one of the first things that goes with her Parkinson's it's her ability to write clearly.

00:48:48: This is a Roland Barre essay by Sy Twombley.

00:48:51: in The Responsibility Of Forms an Ann Carson says How To Draw A Line.

00:48:57: That Is Not Stupid as a Question He Asks In The Essay?

00:49:03: Whether I am me or whether i'm Hitler, it is a problem of human life.

00:49:09: And so she's like going on and about the physical act of writing which for her entire career before she got Parkinson's She has worked with fragments hand-writing notes in archives.

00:49:26: A lot of these epigraphs are from Keats' notes and like mistranscriptions.

00:49:36: And this watcher, this W-H-A-C H-E-R is also a misspelling or a mistranscription of Emily Bronte's...

00:49:48: Okay to wrap up last question if you liked Anne Carson?

00:49:57: No!

00:49:57: If you liked like A Noble Price Winner.

00:49:59: which other noble price winner

00:50:02: I mean,

00:50:03: let's say recent years.

00:50:05: obviously any or no.

00:50:07: Okay.

00:50:07: That's an easy one.

00:50:08: Yeah and minimalist sufferer of heterosexual love.

00:50:17: yeah Louise Glick also Female poet.

00:50:23: i'm not so into her but if you like the stark Landscape parts in Carson she

00:50:31: got

00:50:31: some.

00:50:33: Have you ever read Olga Tukarchuk?

00:50:35: I read Flights.

00:50:37: And it reminded me of my interrail and train traveling years in the two thousands through Europe, It had a sort-of like very Erasmus vibe to it.

00:50:51: If i should make recommendation she won... In year when they were giving out two prices.

00:51:00: What about

00:51:02: Bob Dylan?

00:51:04: Oh, Bob Dylan.

00:51:04: I listen to a lot of songs but i never came to him like as someone who would read on the page.

00:51:09: I don't think he's got so much

00:51:11: in common with Anna Carson.

00:51:12: Probably the most accessible Nobel Prize winner ever.

00:51:15: He is a bard!

00:51:16: Yes That was Lauren Orlan and me to be as Harbour Korn discussing Ann Carson.

00:51:30: If you want hear longer version of our conversation check out our YouTube channel where we find extended conversations.

00:51:39: As I mentioned

00:51:40: at the top,

00:51:41: we are a reader-funded magazine.

00:51:43: Your subscription allows us to continue doing this work so please consider subscribing and go to blnreview.de/.airlift for special offer.

00:51:53: This episode was edited by Capen Roberts and recorded at Chapters Bookshop in Berlin.