The New Yorker: Fiction Teju Cole Reads Anne Carson
8 snips
Dec 1, 2023 
Teju Cole reads and discusses Anne Carson's unique and challenging fiction. They analyze the opening scene, explore the protagonist's emotional journey, and delve into the contrast between cruelty and tenderness in the world.
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Genre Dissolved Into Reception
- Anne Carson's prose dissolves genre boundaries, making fiction feel like concentrated reception of the world.
- The story prioritizes how the world is received over dramatizing external events.
Swimming As Forensic Attention
- Swimming functions as focused attention rather than meditation for the narrator.
- Water removes personhood and forces forensic attention to sensation and technique.
Two Mornings Side By Side
- The story pairs private pleasure with public catastrophe to expose moral dissonance.
- Naming that contradiction becomes a beginning of an ethical awareness, not a solved lesson.