What book/s made you make personal changes in your own life?

There was a time I was an asshole. One of mine is Anne Carson’s “The Beauty of the Husband”. I’m an Anne Carson super nerd and created and wrote 95% of the wiki entry. Part of being less of an asshole includes reading a lot (if anyone needs tips). Anyway, It includes narrative verse that describes erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a doomed marriage. The essay traces the development from adolescent fixation to post-divorce adult fixation, and begins when the main character’s mother insists that the male subject is not to be trusted. The grandfather of the male subject mentions that under no circumstances should she marry his grandson, whom he calls “tragikos” – a word meaning either tragic or goat. The decades-long doomed relationship that follows features betrayal, adultery, separation, and sensuality, and is marked by prophecy, disillusionment, and poignancy.

Carson’s essay is a powerful, moving, and often wryly amusing exploration of how people become the victims of desires they cannot control. A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end. The 29 “tangos” are titled and numbered sections of long lines which alternate with much shorter lines to suggest the movements of tango dancers. There is also a thirtieth entry by the husband.

The essay is dedicated to John Keats, “for his general surrender to beauty.” In his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, Keats concludes that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Each section in the essay begins with a quote from Keats, and the collection as a whole is framed by his aphorism “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”.

Carson, though an accomplished and celebrated writer, has previously mentioned that at heart she considers herself a visual, not verbal, artist. She has noted that she feels books never fully exhaust her ideas. Love and beauty are some of the concepts explored in different ways by Carson in several of her works. She also translates and teaches Ancient Greek. She’s my absolute favorite and has a book, Wrong Norma, coming out on February 6th. I recommend any and everything by her.

by AreProbablyWrong