TORONTO — In the days before the Nobel Prize in Literature was set to be awarded, Claire Foster was holding out hope this would be Anne Carson’s year.
A manager of Toronto independent bookstore Type Books, Foster has been a longtime enthusiastic fan of the Canadian poet. When she learned that Carson had indeed won the prestigious prize on Thursday, her reaction was one of pure delight.
“I was just so excited and so happy,” she said. “It’s the happiest I could have been for the announcement today, I think.”
Foster said Carson “has been a mainstay of our poetry shelves” for 20 years, so the Queen Street West location she manages was stocked with some of Carson’s books. When Foster arrived at the store in the morning, she built a shrine to the Toronto-born writer, displaying a number of her titles in front of the cash register, knowing that the Nobel win would create buzz and curiosity from customers.
In the coming weeks, Foster said the store plans to order more and display them prominently.
“We want them to be easily findable and recognizable,” she said.
According to Indigo spokesperson Madi Downey, “Autobiography of Red” was the bookseller’s top-selling book online by midday and “Anne Carson” was their top-searched term, up 2,272 per cent from the day before. Her book “Nox,” priced at $83.95, had also sold quite a few units, Downey said.
Meanwhile, at Toronto’s Ben McNally Books, store operator Rupert McNally arrived early this morning to order as many Carson works as he could. He said he knew customers would be clamouring to get their hands on her books. Sure enough, two minutes after the doors opened at 10 a.m. two customers arrived, inquiring about Carson.
A poet, essayist, classical scholar and translator, Carson is renowned for her singular, genre-bending style. With a bibliography of more than 20 books of poetry, essays, plays, libretti and translations of ancient Greek texts, Carson has earned praise from across the literary world, while also defying conventions.
Her well-known works include her verse novel “Autobiography of Red,” which reimagines the Greek myth of Heracles killing the winged monster, Geryon. The book of poems and prose, “Men in the Off Hours,” won the inaugural Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001, while “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos” was awarded the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize.
McNally said a Canadian winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is a “huge boon” for the business.
“We see a huge jump in sales of her books and books that she’s worked on,” he said. “Even books onto which she’s done introductions of other people’s works, we’ll see a jump in sale on those as well.”
While McNally said he hasn’t read a lot of her work previously, he knows she is “very thoughtful and very erudite.”
“And I love that for the Nobel,” McNally said. “I love that it’s not necessarily the most in-your-face choice, but someone who I think will be a new find for a lot of readers.”
Meanwhile, when Foster is not working at the bookstore, she said she translates works from French so Carson’s “work as a person who translates has always been so important to me,” she said, adding her favourite Carson book is “Plainwater.”
“But it’s really hard to choose,” she said. “I find her thinking so admirable and ethical and inspiring.”
For Foster, she said she’s excited the Nobel Prize might prompt readers to dig into Carson’s catalogue that includes works published 40 years ago.
“She has such a vast backlist and the Nobel is such a great occasion to think backwards, too, in terms of the work that she has been doing for decades. To be able bring in older titles and obviously for us to be able to celebrate the second Canadian ever to win a Nobel is huge,” Foster said.
“It’s huge for Canadian reading and appreciation, and we feel lucky to hopefully be a beacon that people can come to to find her.”
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