Comments on: The Search Will Go On

By: No Exit

No Exit — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:15:48 +0000

[...] A powerful argument for suicide as a human right, Exit is also strangely life-affirming. Ordinarily, these contradictory positions could suffice as the motor of a plot. Arcan’s protagonist is the irascible, narcissistic Antoinette Beauchamp, who seeks strength and reason to live from within the depths of her own twisted psychology. Knowing that the young woman who wrote this outrageously beautiful, thoroughly original novel did not is, well, heartbreaking. [...]

By: Leila

Leila — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:20:55 +0000

However Arcan fit into the literary/capitalist landscape, the truth of the matter is she was an intelligent and sensitive person who tried to make a go of it. I don’t scorn confession when it is honest and difficult, as obviously Arcan’s was. Confession is not something you trade, it is somethint you are. Perhaps the tragedy of Arcan is that she lived in an era where she found herself trading it. Confession, writing, sex…. saddly, not much differentiated them.

Marianne, you’ve written a piercing and touching piece. Thank you very much.

By: Addison Steele

Addison Steele — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:12:45 +0000

As much as I feel bad about Nelly Arcan and her ending, I don’t think that any biographical material really has much to do with whether her writing works or not (except as a commodity). And I don’t think her writing works all that well — as I don’t think any biographical/confessional writing makes much sense in the early 21st century. I mean it’s pretty much “Been there, done that” sort of stuff, no?
Are we really supposed to get so excited about the fact that someone is going to write about her experiences as a highly-paid escort? Please, give me a break. That is so pre-cultural wars. Only in Quebec would people still get all excited. It’s no wonder that she struggled later to recreate the buzz. The truth is that there really wasn’t much of a buzz in the first place. I mean, woman as commodity: give me another break. Isn’t it about time we move on from this? Like everyone else, I like confessionals — but after a while all those confessions start to sound the same. Has no one heard of Joyce? Woolf? Beckett? If you’re going to write in the early 21st century, you should at the very least have done your literary history.

By: Ami Sands Brodoff

Ami Sands Brodoff — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:51:32 +0000

Beautiful and perceptive piece on Nelly Arcan. I was moved, disturbed, shaken-up by the raw and powerful voice in Putain, which exudes rage. This is what fiction should do: shake us up.

I did not know Arcan but saw her from a distance, fascinated, troubled, disturbed about how she seemed both to play with–and play into–the imprisoning ideals of feminine youth, beauty, and sensuality. It was clear how a clumsy observer and/or reader might get her oevre wrong.

I was shocked by her death, saddened. Saddened, too, by what seemed an odd silence in the anglo literary community I am a part of, though relieved to read the depthful image in Le Devoir on the Saturday after her death. And now this piece by Marianne Ackerman.