Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
The March issue of Letras y Libres has republished the first story William Gaddis ever published in English. It originally appeared in the July 1951 issue of The Atlantic, and it was called (retranslating from Spanish) "Stopping the Player Piano."
Here's a quote:
La industria, probablemente por elemental decencia, construyó diez mil pianos de cola en 1914, pero de los 325.000 que se construyeron en total 80.000 fueron pianolas. Los reparadores de pianos, que habían comenzado a trabajar por vocación sin nada que temer de las regularidades del pianoforte, se encontraron entonces inundados de libros, carpetas y diagramas en los que se les explicaban las maravillas de la
neumática. En ese mismo año se inauguró en Nueva York la Danquard Player Action School, donde se impartían cursos exhaustivos sobre mecánica de la interpretación, y también hubo algunas academias por correspondencia que cubrían las necesidades de los nuevos profesionales.
neumática. En ese mismo año se inauguró en Nueva York la Danquard Player Action School, donde se impartían cursos exhaustivos sobre mecánica de la interpretación, y también hubo algunas academias por correspondencia que cubrían las necesidades de los nuevos profesionales.
For more on Gaddis, see our essay from Issue 14.
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This is “Stop Player. Joke No. 4.”, available online in English here – I think it’s included in The Rush for Second Place.