Heated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney on how Anne Carson changed his life

0:00This is a CBC podcast. Uh, Jacob Tierney, first of all, I am so delighted that you're here. I was like, I want to set the stage for the reason we are talking because it's good to announce that Ann Carson has received the Nobel Prize in literature. Actually, he's a third Canadian to do so. That's a pretty big deal. And also at the same time, you kind of look at the situation and go, okay, it's maybe time. She's 76 years old. She's kind of created some of the greatest works of our generation. And then you posted about this. I posted about this. And then you said, oh man, this is an author who has changed my life. I've read all of her work. And I was like, oh, well, let's go talk to Jacob Tierney about it. So I'm going to start by asking you, as you can imagine, tell me about the first time you encountered Ann Carson's work. The first time was autobiography of red, for sure. I was a teenager.

1:00I mean, I think like most people who read that book, I had never read anything like it. I did not understand what was happening. And it was one of the most moving. I think I read it three times in a row. Like I just couldn't stop reading it. And it's really funny. I forgot. I mean, I've read almost everything that Ann Carson has published, including Wrong Norm or the book that she released. I believe last year, which is an amazing collection. And it's so interesting to think about her writing. I think people are intimidated by it. And the thing that is so amazing about Ann Carson is actually how, once you get into it, it's so present and it's so available to a reader. You don't have to know as much about the ancient Greeks as she does. She's not asking you to. Really? It's so moving. But when I first was, you know, when I was first doing press for Header rivalry, that people were asking me so much about M.M. Romance written by women.

2:01And they were, and I truly, and it hadn't even occurred to me. I was like, oh, I started reading this stuff during the pandemic. And Header rivalry was one of the first ones that I read. And at a certain point, I was like, no, the first one I read was autobiography of red. And it is still to this day, the one very few books have ever affected me in the same way that that book did. We're talking about a book like this is a book that came out in 1998. This is a book that, like, it's, the reason it's impossible to describe is that it's a novel inverse, right? So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a one long poem that is describing this novel. It's a reimagining of a fragment of a poem that she found and then she took that fragment herself. And the myth of Heracles in Gary and Ryan, right? Like, the kind of structurally that way. But it's about a kid in Nova Scotia who thinks that he's unlovable and ugly and falls in love with this boy who he thinks is the coolest boy in the world. And then kind of grows red wings and becomes a monster and falls this boy to Argentina as one of those. And who among us has not been in that exact situation? Who among us is not?

3:01Okay. So you read this book and then you go, I'm going to read this thing three times. When you say that she's very like, when you can kind of like get inside her work, I think like the thing that really strikes me about Ann Carson for someone who's so celebrated, she's incredibly accessible. Like we're talking about like the kind of reading is just, it just moves. Like you're just in it and then you can't get out of it, you know? It is deeply this for all. It's very emotional. It's very present. I think of what I think of for writing now the thing that I would think of besides a biography of red is the beauty of the husband, which is a kind of bunch of poems about her divorce and about also her relationship with her mother. And they are, they are vivid. They are, they're almost, it's almost the opposite of dense poetry in the sense that it's like, there's a whip lash to it. You finish them and you're like, wait, what are you just reading? And you go back and you read it again because when she said has actually been deceptively plain and simple, her writing is, I think as accessible as contemporary poetry is

4:03Kinnecat. Yeah. And it's also, I mean, her, her, her, her, her turn of phrase, like everything, it's just, her writing is exquisite. And I believe that she really changed writing. I, you know, I recently met Ocean Vong and like, I don't think there would be, people would not write like Ocean writes. It was a free of Carson. It was not a free of Carson. There would be no idea of this kind of these short, lyrical, poetry based novel and, I mean, oceans have the same thing to me. Like this is not no criticism. He's genius. But like, and Carson kind of cracked open the idea of a narrative of a novella because I don't think he can be called a novel, really. But like, it's a novella or a very long short story. And just was like, you can do whatever you want with this. You can make this as, as, as, as the serial and as funny and as sexy and as great poetry can be.

5:03Yeah. Yeah. The thing that you're, okay, first of all, I should describe to folks who are listening on the radio. I'm really jumping up and down as you talk about, and Carson. And I, and it's, I'm a bouncy chair. I mean, about. She said, okay, you're bouncing up and down and you're bouncing chair because of and Carson. But I think this, that's the kind of reaction that I think she indenders and it makes sense to me because I'm just going to redo like a part of the citation for the Nobel Prize. Like when they get, when they give her the citation, they said, you know, for playful dialogue with the, with the classical tradition, she's created new forms for contemporary literature. I mean, like, the recognition is being like, oh, she just did a thing that no one had done before with language. Like, that's sort of the idea they're working with. Well, and I think in, in a way of, and history and structure, like the structure to me is always the kind of final frontier. And like the way that she, I saw this interview with her recently, there's many asked her, but like, recommend, what was your recommendation to young writers and new writers and two? She said, start in the middle, which I love because I would absolutely never do it.

6:04I can't write like that. But I love that she does because that is the feeling of like starting the middle of the emotion. Yeah. And for somebody who is such an obviously an extraordinary intellectual, her books and her writing is so emotional. And there, there's so much feeling. The feeling in them is palpable. I think that's what I mean by whiplash, too. It's emotional whiplash because the simplicity of what is being put forward to you is then it accumulates into massive amounts of feeling. Yeah. And my way into the studio to have this conversation with you, I read into CBC books, producer, Bridget. And Bridget gave me the copy that she had in her hand of autobiography of red right here. And she told me to ask you about this, so I'm doing it because I'm going to read, I'm going to read very briefly this page. The page is, she was standing before him now, smiling hard and rummaging in his face with her eyes. Read the Loon book, he said. This was Gagey. The Loon book was an instruction manual for calling Loons. Jacob Tierney, did you invoke the Loons in He Did Or Have You Because Of Ann Carson?

7:06That's the question for you. No, but maybe Rachel Reed did. I invoke to be because Reed, maybe Rachel, I mean, I listened, it set in Nova Scotia. Right? Maybe this was as formative for Rachel's, it was for me. I have no idea. We're very close in age. Yeah. So I would have been like 19 or 18 when this book came out. I love that. I forgot about that part. I just remember the French code and the dancing and a lot of things. I remember a lot of things from that book. Well, let me ask you this because we are literally speaking as you are currently on your lunch break while you make season two of Heated Rival. I feel bad for holding up the nation. I feel like we get the show faster if I didn't go. Honestly, the Prime Minister is not thrilled with you. And I deserve all this cold game we're going to get. I told him. I had to tell him. I had to let him know. I had to do this. Yeah, but even though I looked at the blame for this, but just to take a moment and pause, how do you think reading and cars have is affected the way that you write, do you think?

8:11You know, I think that she's one of those writers. I think it's, listen, I think a lot about writing is when you read people, right? Like they affect you the most when you are the most. And Clarkson is just perfect for me being a person in their mid 40s when I was in my late teens to start reading here. That's when writing, I think, hits you the most. It's kind of like, I can tell how old you are but what your favorite bands are. All right? Nothing will ever mean as much shoes when you were 15, 14, 16, those ages. And I think it's not that similar for big readers with writing in your late teens, really 20s when you kind of start devouring and you find the things that mean the most to you. What Ann Carson taught me was that no idea is too big to explain to somebody in a simple way. There is no topic that is untouchable that you should look at the classics, look at history. She got me reading the Greeks. She got me reading Romans. She got me reading Homer. I mean, I read Homer because of Ann Carson.

9:12And I think that where she, what is so amazing about the kind of professional aspect of her as a teacher through her own writing is that she encourages curiosity and she wants you to learn and she does not present as though she has answers. And I think within that are all the answers. I completely agree. We have exactly the impression that I get out of reading Ann Carson. You sort of read it over and over again and say, it takes so much time to get the, it's she's very precise with the way that she's open, which is like very hard things to sort of do, right? Like as you sort of like a sit and move through this work. I also have to say that like you are the creator of probably the pre-imminent, coming of age, gay love story on the planet at the moment, but you are in a way describing a lineage that goes back to Ann Carson. Do you see your work as in conversation with her? I, I wish to be in conversation with Ann Carson. I mean, you know, my next goes about young Alexander the Great.

10:12I know. Yes. I absolutely consider myself to be in conversation with, she's unquestionably writing on topics that interest me. So yeah, and I think they probably, some of those things interest me because of Ann Carson. There's no doubt about, she is, I would say along with like Graham Green and Dustin Evsky, like the three writers that I've read the most, that had the most impact that I've thought about the most and who's writing and I go back to the most, not because of how the writing changes but because of how I change. And then I want to read them again at different points in my life so that I get a different, I take something different from it. But what I, what it remains is the exquisiteness of the craft. Yeah. Like the writing itself, just the, again, like the simplicity of it, she's, she's so economical and, and to be that economical is every writers, it should be every writer's design. How can I say the most of the fewest amount of words? Yeah. And she does that so, so perfectly.

11:13I think like there's something to be said about Ann Carson is the, I've said this before a million times, but you know, in, get any group of writers in a room together and say, Hey, who do you think is the best living writer? And the real testament is like the name you're going to say that no one will argue with. Even if they, even have a different name, if you go Ann Carson, no one in the room is going to go, Oh, that's a bad opinion because I'll go like, yes, I see exactly how you landed on that, you know, 100%, 100%. And also another thing, you know, if I've given you a copy of autobiography of Reddit, means I had a crush on you. Like I've given that book. I think I bought like 30 of those books in my life. I have no half of them would give it away to boys that I was like, you should read this. I'm now, I'm now imagining 45 different men out there in the world being like, Hey, wait a minute, that's exactly where I said I thought you were around it. It felt like you were rounding round. It felt like you were rounding down. You know, like I was like, no, let's round back up. I'm like, I'm just like, Ann Carson, I won't be pinned down. And I won't be told what I did in the past.

12:16By very favorite thing about Ann Carson is that despite being this prolific writer who has changed literature for so many people, she's so shy that she does not really want to talk about it. She just wants to let the work do the talking. I saw an interview with her fairly recently where someone said, Hey, what are you reading this contemporary? And she said, I haven't read anything contemporary. All I read are very, very old texts. She's like, yeah, yeah, she's talking about Homer again. Yeah, she's like, she was out, you know, yeah. I also feel like what I love about Ann Carson being interviewed is that she's sabotaging this. She doesn't care. Yeah, but I would have loved to see her reaction to winning because I remember quite vividly, another writer that meant a lot to me, Doris Lessing, when Doris Lessing won, and somebody caught her bringing in her groceries, they were like, Doris, you want the Nobel Prize and she was like, oh, who gives up shit? And then stopped and was like, I shouldn't say, I'm grateful, like it was so funny. As you can imagine, I'm not going to let you go while you're on set at heated rivalry season two without asking you, Hey Jacob, what do you listen to these days?

13:19All the spoilers. What do you listen to? What do you, you love asking me this question because I'm not going to answer you. I only listen to music. It is going to be a new season of heat arrival, right? Back to our basket. And I'm not going to tell you. I know, but you know what, if I didn't ask, then we wouldn't have the relationship that we have now. We wouldn't have this pattern, which people love. People love. People are, people really give us more of this pattern, you know? I'm going to give the people that they want. Jacob, I'm going to buy you a copy of autobiography of Red. I know you already have one, but I'll buy you another one. You know one? I think you need it. All right, well, I'm going to go for it. Take up dirty. Appreciate you to go around the show, pal. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Talk soon. Bye. Man, that guy is just the best. That was Jacob Tierney, the creator of Heated Rivaly, the TV show. We were speaking about the Canadian poet and Carson being awarded this year's Nobel Prize for literature. By the way, I should tell you, Jacob Tierney himself has got a new book. It's coming out next week. It's called, I'll believe in anything the making of Heated Rivaly season one. I'm really excited to go find that. In the meantime, my name is Aluminum Dumain. Mood.

14:20This show is called, Comotion. We'll be back on Monday. We'll see you then. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.