‘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 few days earlier, almost randomly. From the very first lines, I was enthralled.

While we were on the bus, a snowstorm suddenly blanketed the roads, and the other passengers and I found ourselves stuck for 10 hours in rural America, surrounded by an entirely white landscape. I took my computer out of my backpack and started to translate Antigonick into French. Spontaneously. I was so absorbed by the power of Carson’s text that I didn’t notice the hours pass. 2. One of Carson’s greatest strengths is that, unlike so many other contemporary writers, she doesn’t try to “make literature”.…