The Quarterly Conversation Issue 21
A Note on Links
More Essays by Milan
Speaking of Distraction
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Another Review of The Novel: An Alternative History
The Orange Eats Creeps
The Unconsoled and the Annihilation of Plot
Critical Mass has posted my write-up of the translation panel I was on last week at City Lights. In my opinion, it was a very interesting conversation. Here’s a bit:
Another question asked whether a bad translation was better than no translation at all. Unable to come down definitively on either side, I speculated that Constance Garnett’s widely maligned translations of the great Russian novels might be an example of this, although Silver completely disagreed, even going so far as to say she wanted to start a society to rejuvenate Garnett’s image. Her point was that often the first translator of a great author is put into the very difficult position of having to translate a complex writing style without having enough leverage to persuade an editor to allow the translation to remain stylistically challenging. In Silver’s opinion, Garnett was a trailblazer working under adverse conditions, a translator who made it possible for the Pevears of the world to now perform what is perhaps more faithful renditions of the great Russian novels.
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
“Many French readers have a passion for short, self-serious, faux-philosophical novels that stupefy American sensibilities. Many German and Northern European contemporary novels zestfully catalogue bleak, pessimistic realities that strike an American audience as profoundly depressing. Middle Eastern fiction at the current moment lacks a Jane Austen who could win over an American female readership.”
Whole lotta unsubstantiated generalizin’ goin’ on here. (Note, too, the weird slippage when Middle Eastern lit is described; would a Norwegian/Cambodian/Balinese “Jane Austen” suddenly win over US readers to Nordic or Asian writing?)