“In Difficulty is Ecstasy”: Physical Experience at the Limits in Colum McCann’s Dancer and Let the Great World Spin

• Main Author: Lara Delage-Toriel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAES 2016-04-01
• Series: Angles
• Subjects: McCann Colum; empathy; intersubjectivity; narrative kinæsthetics; ordalium; somatic engagement
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/1779

This article focuses on two novels by Colum McCann, Dancer (2003) and Let the Great World Spin (2009) that place the body in extreme conditions, be it the dancing body of Rudolf Nureyev, the tightrope-walking body of Philippe Petit or the bodies of other characters when pushed out of their comfort zones. By reflecting upon the function and impact of transgressive physical feats along with the heightened somæsthetic experience that is undergone by the novels’ characters and readers, this study aims to show how Colum McCann’s writing engages the human body in the literary process, both as sensitive and sense-making entity. To this end, it brings into play different scientific approaches: Peter Brooks on the correlation between semiotization of body and somatization of story, Henri Bergson on the relationship between the body’s position and its varying perceptions, David Le Breton on the social meaning of risk-taking, as well as various cognitive scientists on the mechanisms at work in kinaesthetic experience.