[dis]Cursive
Gloves On, Knives Out: New and Old Developments re: Anne Carson’s Wrong Norma
Anne Carson has revealed that she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
In August of this year, London Review of Books published Carson’s short talk “Gloves On!” where she meditates on mortality and tells of the diagnosis, the symptoms (one in particular), and the boxing workouts (hence the title) that are part of her therapy.
Carson writes: “When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a symptom particularly mortifying to me was that my handwriting disintegrated.”
Note the weird time structure here: the simple sentence flows well, comma-less, and yet…”when”? Is this an instant of knowledge or a slow development? What followed what?
“Gloves On!” has other subtly time-tortioned sentences: “One day you looked back from 25 to now and there it is, the doorway, black, waiting.” Tense?
We see her struggle: “…turn the page, pay attention, try again. I try again; I am wrong. Life slips one more notch towards barbarity.”
Not “frustrated” or “defeated,” but “wrong.” The word choice is no surprise if you’ve already got Wrong Norma front of mind.
Though I’m less than a decade younger than Carson, I was an early “printer” myself, never having mastered a smooth cursive. In high school, where Carson began studying Greek, I took typing. For anyone who thinks of themselves as a writer, the loss of control over any accustomed method of communicating would be a blow.
Also unusual in this passage is the word “barbarity.”
To speak of “barbarians” is now out of favour, as for centuries it has named the culture—or lack of culture—of the foreign Other. But we still turn it on ourselves as an index of grave cultural crisis, as Rosa Luxemburg did: ”either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Or when a supposedly civilized culture betrays civilized norms. I did a quick search for “barbarity” on X—the most recent instance by someone I follow at time of writing is from Vijay Prashad “The barbarity of the Israeli bombing is horrendous.”
Carson, however, would know the Greek origin: in Homer barbarians were speakers of an incomprehensible language.
To stave off Parkinson’s disease and slow the loss of her handwriting, Carson has taken up specialized exercises in boxing—the workout moves if not the actual combat. Boxing, of course, is seen by many “cultured” folks (if not Hemingway, then Jane Austen and my mother for sure) as a kind of barbarity, however much it’s softened by putting on gloves and obeying rules. Carson lets the reader enjoy that irony without a prompt.
Among the enigmatic, fragmentary graphics that intersperse Wrong Norma, most are text snippets in type. But a few are handwritten, and a few of those are in cursive. The most striking and prominently placed instance is at the top of the book’s title page. The title is presented twice, both in handwriting. Once below the author’s typeset name, in small, slightly-linked block printing, but also above the author’s name, in much larger — though distinctly uneven—cursive script, flipped upside down.
Here I’ve righted “Wrong”…
In the Miramichi Review in April of this year—just before “Gloves On!” appeared—author Michael Greenstein called this quite aptly “a scribbling script.”
Was Carson already showing us in Wrong Norma the effect of Parkinson’s disease on her handwriting?
The graphics in Wrong Norma presumably were added during the assembly of the book in late 2023. They may have been made at the same time. The onset of Carson’s symptoms might have come even earlier.
As for the smoother script snippets—another hand? A better day?
I can’t be the first to think it—it strikes me as obvious—but I find no trace of such a conjecture on X or Reddit or in a broader Internet search. There have been expressions of surprise and sorrow at the news of Carson’s illness, but so far no one seems to be relating “Gloves On!” to Wrong Norma.
In a recent essay called “Backwards is north,” published two months after “Gloves On!” and in the same magazine—and one month after the Louisiana Channel interview where Carson discusses her diagnosis and her handwriting—Michael Wood takes a close look at the graphics in Wrong Norma. He refers to the handwriting samples on the title page as “slightly cramped” and “loosely written,” but makes no connection to Parkinson’s.
Once I had seen it, I couldn’t help seeing more. In the Louisiana Channel interview Carson speaks of her love of learning cursive: “I remember especially the joy of getting to the letter “S”—all those curves….” Wrong Norma has a page containing only a graphic of the repeated letter “S” in cursive script. Penmanship practice, oddly dotted, like a border on a map.
Does it matter, this “solution” to the mystery of the shaky handwriting in Wrong Norma?
I’m happy to point it out, “wrong” or not, if only for the vain reason that it shows I’m paying attention to her work. But in a way it detracts from my thesis that Wrong Norma is a coherent whole, united under a theme of state violence. The observation about her handwriting locates the book in an ongoing autobiographical flow rather than a freestanding closure.
I would still argue that Carson’s primary explanation of her title—“wrong” because the book is an eclectic anthology with no through-line—is a red herring. The possibility that her Parkinson’s symptoms are hidden in plain sight in Wrong Norma just adds another layer to what she is not saying.