Inside the Circus Tent: Excerpts from an Interview with Angela Carter, 1988 Available to Purchase

In 1988, Angela Carter came to New York and she and Snitow had a two-hour conversation. The talk ranged widely, including Carter’s belief that if we could only slide Marx and Freud together we might make sense of things; her regrets that she writes too beautifully, her elaborate style getting in her way; her eagle eye for style in general; her observations of differences between America (white hats and black hats) and England (shades of grey); her love for the novelist Christina Stead, whom she considers one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century; her analysis of the difference between French socialism (logical, Lenin) and English (dreamy, Romantic, visionary). Here she makes explicit what is elsewhere only subtlety implied: She is a leftist feminist, and for all her magical effects, a hardheaded critic of our times. This is a relatively rare interview with an author who died tragically early.