@newyorker The newly minted Nobel Prize winner Anne Carson shared a book recommendation and some timeless writing advice at the 2024 National Book Awards. #annecarson #poetry #booktok #classics ♬ original sound - The New Yorker
October 9, 2026
"Start in the middle."
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30 comments:
This is exactly the type of person we want judging whether countries committed genocide or not.
This needs a tag: Women in Politics
"This needs a tag: Women in Politics"
I think you are in the comment section.
My question is: What did Margaret Atwood do to piss off the Nobel Committee?
Freder Frederson said...
"This needs a tag: Women in Politics"
I think you are in the comment section.
My question is: What did Margaret Atwood do to piss off the Nobel Committee?
You mean the dumbass woman who thinks Catholics are muslims and needs to wear a Hijab for a few years in a Muslim country?
Anne Carson apparently spent her entire life as a professor creating nothing anyone else wanted and saddling generations younger than her with non-dischargable debt and living on the backs of taxpayers.
She was a parasite on productive parts of society her entire life.
I can see why she is so snooty and proud of her ignorance.
Her advice to writers is "start in the middle." I've always seen that as storytelling advice intended to hook the reader. In follow-up, I wish she was asked if that applies equally to fiction, nonfiction or both.
Her talent is moving ancient texts into modern interest with modern cross-currents. Geryon's conflicts with his parents at the dinner table.
holy carp why is everyone so old?
works for oreos not for donuts…
rhhardin said...
Her talent is moving ancient texts into modern interest with modern cross-currents. Geryon's conflicts with his parents at the dinner table.
They should get girls off only fans and get them reading Homer to kids in schools.
They would be cheaper, keep the boys interested, and do a better job than this pretentious twat.
It was an entertaining old show, but I'm surprised to see them giving a Nobel Prize to the Crypt Keeper.
She could have said "In medias res" instead. You bypass exposition (Hamlet's father is already dead) and then fill in later through dialogue, flashbacks and description of past events.
Ms.Carson is not making a joke but it does sound like it.
The weird ones were over on the right side of the screen.
I Geryon
Geryon was a monster everything about him was red Put his snout of the covers in the morning it was red How stiff the red landscape where his cattle scraped against their hobbles in the red wind Burrowed himself down in the red dawn jelly of Geryon's dream
Geryon's dream began red then slipped out of the vat and ran upsail broke silver it shot up through his roots like a pup
Secret pup At the front end of another red day
II Meanwhile He Came
Across the salt knobs it was Him Knew about the homegold Had sighted red smoke about the red spires
III Geryon's Parents
If you persist in wearing your mask at the supper table well good night then They said and drove him up those hemorrhaging stairs To the hot dry arms to the ticking red taxi of the incubus Don't want to go want to stay downstairs and read
IV What an Odd Idea
Why did Herakles kill Geryon? Just violent Had to it was one of his labors (the tenth) Got the idea that Geryon was Death if he harrowed him he could live forever
(Stesichoros says that Geryon had a little red dog Herakles killed that too)
V Geryon's Death Begins
Geryon walked the red length of his mind and answered No It was murder And torn to see the cattle lay All these darlings said Geryon And now me
VI Geryon's Reversible Destiny
His mother saw it mothers are like that Trust me she said Engineer of his softness You don't have to make up your mind right away Behind her red right cheek Geryon could see the coil of the hotplate starting to glow
VII Geryon's Mother's Question
Do I expect too much? not a question I supplicate you she said she was wearing All her breasts today
VIII Meanwhile in Heaven
Athena was looking down through the floor of the glass-bottomed boat Athena pointed Zeus looked *Him*
XI Geryon's Weekend
Later well later they left the bar went back to the centaur's place the centaur had a cup make out of a skull Holding three measures of wine Holding it he drank Come over here you can bring your drink if you're afraid to come alone The centaur patted the sofa beside him Reddish yellow small alive animal not a bee moved up Geryon's spine on the inside
X Geryon's Father
A quiet root may know how to holler He liked to suck words Here is an almighty one he would say after days of standing in the doorway NIGHTBOLLSNORTED
XI Geryon's War Record
Geryon lay on the ground covering his ears The sound of the horses like roses being burned alive
XII Where They Hid the Helmet
In the front hall closet behind the human masks
XVI [sic] Schooling
In those days the police were weak and the family was strong Hand in hand the first day Geryon's mother took him to school This would be hard for you if you were weak but you're not weak she said and neatened his little red wings and pushed him in through the door
XVII Reasoning
Are there many little boys who think they are a monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him joyfully
XXI Wings
Steps off a scraped March sky and sinks Up into the blind Atlantic morning a small red dog jumping across the beach miles below like a Freed Shadow
XXII Herakles' Killing Club
Little dog did not see it he felt it All events carry but one
XXIII Herakles' Arrow
Arrow means kill It parted Geryon's skull like a comb Made the boy lean At an odd slow angle sideways As when a poppy shames itself in a sudden whip of Nude breeze
XXV Total Things Known about Geryon
He loved lightning He lived on an island His mother was a nymph of a river that ran to the sea His father was a gold cutting tool Old scholia say that Stesichoros says that Geryon had six hands and six feet and wings He was red and his strange red cattle excited envy Herakles came and killed him for his cattle Killed the dog too (named Orthos meaning Straight Up)
XXVI Geryon's End
The red world And corresponding red breezes went on Geryon did not
"Dodging immense chunks of natural reality falling out of a blue sky" would make a good replacement for "Set loose upon a wild, untamed continent."
499 BC is when literature went bad.
Seriously, what a great quote. I'd love to learn Greek and read Homer since the Iliad and the Odysee are both poems. But you know that is. I'd also love to read books in the original French, German, and Spainish. But y'know.
She wrote a book called NOX. It’s available for $35 on Amazon. It memorializes her estranged brother who died in the early 2000s. The pages fold out like an accordion and the book comes in a box. (It has to be deliberate don’t you think - Nox in a box?)
“Left-hand pages feature Latin dictionary entries breaking down Catullus Poem 101 word-by-word (an ancient elegy for a dead brother). Right-hand pages layer family photos, handwritten notes, typewritten text, collages, and stamps.”
Sounds too sad for me.
For someone who guards her privacy, NOX seems to indulge voyeurism.
How did they publish books in 500 BC?
God's Justice
In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.
On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly
and lost track of time.
It was about two inches long
with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Becall....
Anne Carson it strikes me does something of what Vicki Hearne does, which is take an interest in what men are interested in and introduce slight but devastating corrections.
If you're going to buy one book probably her Glass Irony and God is the one to go for.
I don’t get it. From what I’ve seen she strikes me as a nothingburger. A pale imitation of Joyce, at best, and I don’t even like Joyce.
Yeah, she's no phillip roth. Or norman Mailer. I was looking thought some of her stuff and didn't find one dick joke.
And people says she's great.
Joyce was a great writer and a bad novelist. The Dubliners is his best work. He had bad eyes and his medical struggles and numerous eye surgeries make you admire his grit and determination to keep on writing.
But ultimately he was just a middle-class Irishman with a great talent for words, and nothing important to say. When you're crippled with such bad eyes, you turn inward. And if there's nothing there, it shows up in your work.
You can say the same for Proust. A great writer. But all he could do is write about his Pillow.
Who ought to care about the opinions of a bunch of random Norwegians sitting on top of a pile of dynamite money?
Awarding obscure authors Nobel Prizes avoids controversy, because no one cares.
Yeah Chuck, that's why they gave it Bob Dylan.
She seems like a reasonably interesting character, but the handful of poems I've seen of hers feel like something out of a college creative writing class. (Example.)
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