Here is a another article that is very critical of Ernaux's win. It really does seem that her winning ruffled some feathers, which I didn't expect. I felt that this article in particular is interesting, because it is exactly the aspects of Ernaux's work that the author criticizes (and, in my opinion, misunderstands), that seem to - partly - constitute her greatness.
For example, in the last section of the article the author expresses shock and horror over Ernaux's insensitive thoughts, in Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit, on the issue of her mother's deteriorating dementia and the possibility of euthanasia. But what I particularly liked about that book, the first I read from Ernaux, is the frankness and courage with which she exposes her growing disgust at her mother's state, "ugly" thoughts from which she was unable to escape. I think that people usually try to push such thoughts away and prefer to imagine that they had never come to them, because it is just too difficult to admit to oneself that one was able to entertain them - Ernaux chooses a completely different path, she manages to pin down her exact feelings and thoughts, no matter how uncomfortable, at the time when the ordeal with her mother was happening, and to expose them frankly and lucidly. Her project is based on truth and complete honesty.
Based on Ernaux's work, the author comes to the conclusion that the French literature has reached "moral terminus." But I think that such conclusion cannot be further from the truth: as the article I posted earlier shows, Ernaux is an author with a clear moral drive, and belongs to the tradition of engaged intellectuals in France. I feel that her frank admissions and analyses of her own reflexions, no matter how unflattering, in fact lead to a certain liberation, if one may call it that.
Also, I have to say that the author's suggestion that "Knausgaard’s own Nobel now seems inevitable" because Ernaux won seems to me unwarranted.
"Ernaux’s purported tough-mindedness is merely a reflexive Jacobinism."
> This stuck out to me. Her purported tough-mindedness is a reflexive support for... a central figure of a sovereign and indivisible public authority with power over civil society? What is this sentence even supposed to mean? Words have meanings, this is just an empty signifier for "bad thing".
So, 2s of digging later (not even digging, just reading the lines at the bottom of the article):
"
Jonathan Clarke is a contributing editor of City Journal
" "
City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank."
Yeah, right-wingers gonna right-wing. She reeeeaaaally gets under their skin for some reason.
theimaginativeconservative.org
