La lecture & le viol

La grasse matinée d'hier (réveillé à 6 h 50, levé à 8 h) n'est qu'un souvenir, d'autant plus que le changement d'heure a eu lieu cette nuit et qu'il est “en fait” 5 h.

Lu ce matin le mail d'une collègue sur la messagerie des anglicistes de l'enseignement supérieur :

The generation gap between me and my students increases every year!! Today they asked me for recommendations about novels. I tried to think of novels that might really grab them. These are students for whom under normal circumstances reading a novel is something you do under duress when you are obliged to by a teacher. Et encore. 

Of more recently published novels, I thought Solar Bones by Mike McCormack was just amazing, and that On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is now the best American novel (!!). I still think that Dermot Healy's A Goat Song is brilliant. But that's me. I don't know if they would really grab these Millenials. Could anyone recommend novels in English that might really hook very-reluctant-reader Millenials? I kind of feel that the stakes are high because if I could find some novels that they could read on their own with genuine pleasure (and not as a chore) it might turn things around (for some of them). And they could move on from there. I hope this makes sense.

Je lui ai répondu ceci :

I didn't know that Vuong, whose poetry collection I've loved, had written a novel.

I would recommend Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress but I'm sure that's just me. Otherwise, I know that my L1 classes were generally taken by McCarthy's The Road (alas) and I think Evaristo's latest Girl, Woman, Other would capture those with a keen interest in gender politics.

 

Si je n'en étais pas “rendu” à devoir donner un gros coup de collier en avril pour mes deux cours d'agrégation, et à devoir désormais pondre à peu près un quadrilatère par jour si je veux avoir fini d'ici l'été le projet Scarlatti, je me relancerais bien dans un défi quotidien de vidéo ou de traduction.

Dans le mail de la collègue, j'aime bien l'emploi des verbes grab (séduire ?) et hook (harponner ?). De la lecture comme viol(ence), aussi...