Conversational Reading

Stealing from Conversational Reading
Something called the Ohio Irish American News has stolen large parts of my posting on Anakana Schofield's novel... »
Latest Krasznahorkai Link
Right here, on Melancholy of Resistance. The story is somewhat complex, but not as crucial as it may seem, the... »
On the Purpose of Long Sentences
A great answer to the question of "why do you write long sentences?" The respondent is László Krasznahorkai, the author of... »
Oh Really?
Cynthia Ozick is an incredible writer and a smart critic, but she should really stop talking about Amazon reviews. She's... »
Mallarmé as Jesus
Without comment. As Meillassoux summarizes it, Un Coup de Dés centers on the aftermath of a shipwreck, which leaves a... »
Why Is Everyone Reviewing HHhH?
With the James Wood review in this week's New Yorker, it's official: everyone has reviewed HHhH by Lauren Binet. And, well, the... »
Are People Starting to Tire of the Franz?
The new book isn't getting very good reviews. And this review even started out with a meta-critique of Franzen the media... »
On the Importance of Not Making People Loathe Literature
Maybe this is why I've generally found Simon Critchley's philosophy quite rewarding, whereas many others in his genre are dull... »
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
Here is the schedule for the summer read of A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava. The dates correspond to the first day of... »
See Attacks, Vicious
Douglas Messerli on Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard. In Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 fiction, Holzfällen, moreover, we... »

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus March 5, 2012
With his second novel, The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus has diverged from the path he trod while becoming one of America’s best-known experimental fiction writers. He’s written a plague fantasy told in first-person by a middle-aged, Jewish husband and father living in the suburbs. It is cold and coherent in its execution, with one narrator and a clear plot, an […]
War Diary by Ingeborg Bachmann March 5, 2012
Bachmann famously described the entry of Hitler's troops into Klagenfurt as the end of her childhood. From these pages, though, it isn't clear what immediately followed. Here she seems to exist in a liminal zone between self-determination and powerlessness: she has worked out tactics of flight, but not full resistance or solidarity with others. Thi […]
Us by Michael Kimball March 5, 2012
Michael Kimball’s novella Us originally appeared in the U.K. under the title How Much of Us There Was. Tyrant Books has now brought it out in the United States, where Kimball was born and lives, and his website lists the widespread praise that the book has received. Here are but two of the many accolades: “disarmingly simple, gorgeously structured, and as ac […]
The Beautiful and the Damned by Siddhartha Deb March 5, 2012
Since embracing economic reforms in the early 1990s, India has undergone swift and wrenching changes that are remaking the country from the ground up. As village and farmland give way to tech companies, call centers, factories, and malls, these new landscapes are increasingly peopled by new archetypal characters, much as the similarly radical transformation […]
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky March 5, 2012
The first English-language publication of Krzhizhanovsky’s fiction would not follow until 2006, three quarters of a century after its conception. His extensive repertory consists principally of short stories, of which there are more than one hundred, as well as five novels. The first of these novels selected for English translation (by Joanne Turnbull) and p […]
Zona by Geoff Dyer March 5, 2012
Now we have Zona, Dyer’s book-length explication of the film that he has been mulling over in print for more than a decade. Like the film’s journeying hero, who devises his route by randomly tossing bolt nuts and trudging after them, he’s taken his time getting to the point. But the end result is revealing; despite its critical trappings, Zona reads like a p […]
Remaking the Short Story: Four Untranslated Authors from Spain March 5, 2012
Authors of what’s called the New Spanish Short Story have had a great burst of creativity that began in the early 1980s and flowered during the 1990s and 2000s (the few stories that have been translated have been relegated to obscure editions unavailable in the United States). From the stories of the fantastic by Cristina Fernádez Cubas to the structural inv […]
Dogma by Lars Iyer March 5, 2012
A lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Iyer is the author of Spurious—which won The Guardian’s “Not the Booker Prize” last year—and, now, Dogma, a sequel to the previous work. Both books are novels in name only—bookstores require these convenient taxonomies. In reality Iyer has written scabrous philosophical comedies about two men […]
Mercè Rodoreda and the Style of Innocence March 5, 2012
The Autonomous Republic of Catalonia now holds up Mercè Rodoreda as a national treasure. Barcelona offers commemorative sculptures, libraries, gardens in her name; government-supported institutes sponsor conferences and translations; a yearlong festival marked her 2008 centennial. Her international champions include Gabriel García Márquez. Apart from two rec […]
The Clarice Lispector Roundtable March 5, 2012
Barbara Epler: The whole Lispector re-launching began innocently enough: our plan had been to bring out a new edition of The Hour of the Star in the old Pontiero translation with an ardent Colm Tóibín preface. (With a backlist of our size—about 1,100 titles from 75 years of publishing—we are always trying to repackage classic backlist to reach more readers.) […]

Six Questions for Margaret B. Carson on Sergio Chejfec’s My Two Worlds

Without a doubt, one of the most interesting new books I read last year was My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec. The book raises quite legitimate comparisons to authors like Sebald and Walser, and its brief 100 pages are made expansive by intricate, precise prose. The book concerns the reflections made by its unnamed narrator over the course of a short walk through a park in some unnamed Brazilian city. What is perhaps most striking about this walk is the haze of thought that Chejfec creates within it. Reading, we sense some sort of meaning . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Nine Questions for Natasha Wimmer on The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño

The Third Reich was unpublished at the time of Bolaño’s death, but there are indications that he meant it to be published one day: he had begun typing it up, as he did with earlier unpublished novels that were eventually published in his lifetime. The book follows the transformation of one Udo Berger, a German tourist in Spain’s Costa Brava as he plays a board game called The Third Reich. Wimmer corresponded with me on the actual board game that inspired The Third Reich, reading fast for pleasure vs reading slow for translation, the role of creativity in the process of translation, and readings and misreadings of Roberto Bolaño. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Six Questions for Rosalie Knecht on Cesar Aira’s Seamstress and the Wind

By now, readers of this blog (and I would hope readers in general) need no introduction to Cesar Aira, one of the most exciting authors to be making his way into English. Over the past couple of years, New Directions has done amazing work with Aira, publishing novel after novel. I think they’re beginning to make some headway in developing the kind of audience that this writer deserves. They have just published The Seamstress and the Wind . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Seven Questions for Ottilie Mulzet on Animalinside

Perhaps no other author has grown in my estimation over the past 12 months as much as László Krasznahorkai. An author known for his challenging grammar and long, complex sentences, he has previously published two novels in English translation, both by New Directions–War and War and The Melancholy of Resistance. Animalinside, his third book in English, has taken a circuitous route, first being published in Paris as part of Sylph Editions’ Cahiers series . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Seven Questions for Lynne Tillman

I’m no specialist on the relative reputations of contemporary U.S. authors, but I would classify Lynne Tillman as “greatly underappreciated.” Over a long and fruitful career she has worked in numerous genres to numerous ends, the one underlying quality seeming to be, simply, quality. Her latest book, a collection of short fiction called Someday This Will Be Funny, has just been published by Red Lemonade . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Seven Questions for Translator Tim Mohr

I don’t say things like this a whole lot, but I feel relatively safe in saying that if Tim Mohr wasn’t translating, our image of contemporary German literature would be quite different. His first two translations were two of the most notable and noted books to emerge into English from Germany in the ‘00s: Guantanamo by Dorothea Dieckmann and Wetlands by Charlotte Roche. He followed up those two with two novels for Europa Editions by Alina Bronsky, who has quickly built a name for herself as a writer to be reckoned with in English. Prior to coming on the translation scene in 2004 with Guantanamo, Mohr worked as an editor with Playboy . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Five Questions with Marius Kociejowski, Author of The Pigeon Wars of Damascus

This is an interview by editor Eric Ormsby an editor with the press Biblioasis: The Pigeon Wars of Damascus by Marius Kociejowski. I’m presenting it here for two reasons: first, having published the work of author Ray Smith (have a look at Century), Horacio Castellanos Moya, and others, as well as having an international fiction series edited by Stephen Henighan, the press has distinguished itself in my mind for quality literature. The second reason is that the book in question, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus, is a work that fits into the genre of “atypical travel literature,” and as such might resonate with the readers of this site who have enjoyed authors like Jean Rolin, W.G. Sebald, etc. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Seven Questions for Translator Jan Steyn on Edouard Leve’s Suicide

Without a doubt, one of the best things I’ve read this year is a small book called Suicide. It was written by the contemporary French writer Edouard Levé, who, ten days after delivering the manuscript, in fact did commit suicide, but the book is not so much a suicide note or explanation as it is an exactingly wrought object. It was only on a second reading that I was able to truly appreciate how precise the prose is, and how enigmatically this small book opens up to envelop you as a reader. If the suicide on the face of this book leads you to assume that only one interpretation of this book is impossible, everything in the book stands to refute it. After reading Suicide, it’s clear to me that Levé was a major talent. Already, Dalkey will follow up Suicide with a second Levé book, Autoportrait, to be translated by Lorin Stein and published in early 2012, and I expect Levé’s final two books will not be long in following. I interviewed Suicide’s translator, Jan Steyn, for more about this intriguing book and its author . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Four Questions for Kate Briggs on Roland Barthes’ Preparation of the Novel

Last December Columbia University Press published a posthumous work by Roland Barthes titled The Preparation of the Novel. The book consists of lectures for a series of courses on the writing of a novel, lectures which were among the last Barthes delivered before his sudden death in 1980. At the time of the lectures many speculated that they were a run-up to a project many had long hoped Barthes would take on: the writing of his own novel, provisionally titled “Vita Nova.” Although Barthes never did write a novel, the lectures provide both an idea of how Barthes might have approached this unique task, as well as his typically profound thoughts on numerous aspects of the novel. I interviewed the book’s translator, Kate Briggs, on this capacious text. The Times Literary Supplement praised Briggs’ translation, saying in part “Kate Briggs’s wonderful translation finally makes available in English a most unusual book by one of the most significant literary figures of the twentieth century.” . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Six Questions for Anna Moschovakis on The Jokers by Albert Cossery

More than with any other novel I’ve translated, the translation challenges ofThe Jokers caught me by surprise. The descriptive language was so vivid, I didn’t realize at first just how hard it would be to inhabit Cossery’s tone in English, and a lot of the tone does reside in his use of adjectives. My first draft must have been at least 10% longer than the final draft―that’s how much repetition I cut, with the indispensable guidance of Edwin Frank, my editor on this book, in order to wrangle the English version into a tonal territory similar to the one Cossery’s original occupies in French. (This, at least, was our attempt.) . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)

DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.

The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)

The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.

Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)

Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.

Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)

Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)

A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

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