Two Annies — Patrick Autréaux
now up at 3AM Magazine
“When a work that wants to appear emancipatory achieves such institutional recognition, a great deal of discernment is required of the bearer to uphold the evacuating tempo of their voice. That men and women of the people have a voice at all is not because we have given it to them. We understand well that it is granted through the capital of the notoriety they have acquired, and which is often born of a misunderstanding on the part of, or of complicity with, what in society is dominant. This capital is the motor of its own fructification: being recognized, if not for an accident or act of self-scuttling, you will become even more so. Far from being emancipatory, notoriety thus participates in a system wherein freedom of expression is proclaimed, but where being heard is only a possibility for the few.”
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My translation of Patrick Autréaux’s ‘Two Annies’ is now up at 3AM Magazine.
You can read it here.
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Patrick Autréaux is a French writer, living between Paris and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The view of illness as an inner experience informs his first cycle of writing, ending with Se survivre (Survive; Verdier, 2013). He is the author of dozens of books and articles in French. His new novel, L’Epoux (The Husband) will be published by Gallimard in Spring 2025. Dans la vallée des larmes is available in English as In The Valley of Tears published by UIT Books, and his essays have appeared in Socrates on the Beach (Issue 9), Asymptote, and elsewhere. Recently, Pussyboy (Verdier, 2021), a novel about an erotic passion, was translated to Spanish and published by Canta Mares.