Mircea Cartarescu

I just stumbled across of Mircea Cartarescu in this year end wrap-up on Sight and Signal. The description sounds fantastic:

"Sometimes I explain my book as a mystical butterfly or a flying cathedral," says the author. Critics are overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of content, as well as the variety of genres Cartarescu masters, yet they still can't agree on how to classify the book. The NZZ calls it a "masterpiece of literary mannerism" - "as if de Chirico and Kafka, H. R. Giger and Bruno Schulz had got together and written a novel."

It points to a feature that they did on Cartarescu as well. Yep. Very interesting. I'm not so keen on the strong homosexual themes, simply because i'm heterosexual and am not into books at the moment that has sex as their primary themes in the first place. Still, i'll pick up a translation if it ever appears in the U.S.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem likely. This post by Thomas McGonigle, who reviewed Cartarescu's short story collection Nostalgia, released by New Directions in 2005, notes that only 500 copies of Nostalgia have been sold, so New Directions is not likely at this time to release any other books by Cartarescu.

I'll definitely buy Nostalgia in the coming months.

majority of NBCC ambivalent to works in translation

Only five works in translation appeared on the National Book Critics Circle's longlist of recommended books in 2007? I haven't figured out how many titles are on the longlist, but there were over 800 people polled. That's sad.... very sad.

Scott Esposito fought the good fight for Enrique Vila-Matas' Montano's Malady though. He has a great essay on Vila-Matas titled "The Fruits of Parasitism" up on the Quarterly Conversation

Index Translationum

Literary Saloon breaks down the numbers from the Index Translationum, which i was unfamiliar with. Even though i believe the number of books translated into English is shamefully low, i just haven't been able to trust any column that makes that argument using percentages. Literary Saloon seems to be as well, and while they try work through the years the data was gathered, as well as the numbers of speakers of each language in question, they find that there is definitely a problem with the collection of the data from countries like China. It's strange that obvious questions like these cannot receive definitive answers in an age like this.

do these books in translation numbers take into account disposable reading?

As much as i get my jollies on slagging America this week, there might be something a little off about these numbers used for this article:

In Germany 13% of books are translations. In France it's 27%, in Spain 28%, in Turkey 40% and in Slovenia 70%, but in Britain and America the best estimates suggest that the fraction of books on the shelves which started off in another language is somewhere around two per cent.

Books on the shelves? I haven't been to any of those countries, aside from Britain and America, so i don't know what books are on their shelves. In America, though, the sheer amount of pulp on the shelves is overwhelming. Think of the serial romance and western novels, the ones that are rotated off the shelves every few months. Do Slovenia and Turkey have the sheer numbers of pulp novels begging for space on their shelves? Are books more expensive to produce in those countries, meaning the publishers chose to produce more enduring works.... more literature.. because they will have greater staying power in the market, as opposed to something quickly read and disposed. How many of these countries are as set up for disposable reading as the U.S.?

The U.S. is remarkably insular, incurious about the rest of the world. It pisses me off to see how little books in translation are on the shelves. However, i'd like to see raw numbers, not percentages. 2% might be accurate, bt there might actual be a greater number of titles in translation in the U.S. that what that 2% makes it seem.

It's a little odd to think about this, as most of what i read these days are works in translation

The original is unfaithful to the translation

This pirated Chinese dubbed version of Arrested Development, with English subtitles drawn from Chinese dubs, and not the original English scripts, seems oddly suited to the nature of Arrested Development.

I wonder if there is another step of Mandarin to Cantonese or vice versa, that is being left out.

translation and intent

Bill responds to my fixation on the use of the word hymenoptera in Gombrowicz's "The Events on the Banbury":

The whole hymenoptera issue would have completely evaded my attention if you had not mentioned it. Yet another example of things I don't know anything about. The larger question on whether or not editors, translators, or writers do most of the fucking up is an interesting one. For myself, if I like an author, I ususally blame the translator (unless of course I like the translator, in which case I blame the
editor...). If I don't care, I assume the author is at fault. This particular case is an interesting one...

Say Gombrowicz DID get the name wrong. The translator is of course obliged to translate the text in front of him. An editor gets it and catches the error (unlikely as that is). Does he change it? Is he obligated? Is he allowed? Suppose Gombrowicz made the "error" on purpose. Suppose it was designed to be a way to lead the attentive and intelligent reader astray. Suppose it is just nonsense. How can
you tell (especially in this case where an author is dead)? As an editor, what do you do?

That original post was excerpted from an email, as is Bill's reply.

Bacacay and hymenoptera

Part of the reason why i'm having trouble finishing a book now is because i'm stuck on finishing Witold Gombrowicz's Bacacay. It's not an inaccessible book. Kat picked it up on the drive back from Austin, reading the first story quickly, and has been intrigued ever since. (She's waiting for me to finish before she dives into it, although i'm urging her to try other authors first.) There are some great stories, and even better ideas in there, but i keep finding them overlong, and become impatient with his lack of immediacy. Obviously, i have no problem with long books, but i don't like like short stories to be overly ornate. Bacacay is a good read, but i doubt whether i'll engage him in a full novel.

It seems that the translator is doesn't know his entomology. A scorpion is not a member of hymenoptera. It's done in the story "The Events on the Banbury.” Hymenoptera is the order for ants, wasps, and bees.... all insects. A scorpion is an archanid, more closely related to spiders. They actually belong to a different subphylum altogether, Chelicerata, while insects are in Hexapoda..... distant cousins evolutionarily. Eh, it's just taxonomy, right?

But why is hymenoptera used? Probably it's because both wasps and scorpions sting. Why is this important to me? Because it makes me suspect that the translator is possibly being purple or lazy. It makes me doubt everything that Gombrowicz has written. Did Gombrowicz, the narrator or the translator use the word hymenoptera? What other words am i missing the significance of or interpreting too much into?

Please remember that i'm a college dropout who majored in biology, and am no expert in either literature or entomology. This obsession over one word is petty and obsessive. Nonetheless, that one word choice has me in a doubting frenzy now.

(Shit. Was it actually the word hymenoteran that was used? The book's not handy to reference at the moment.)

Pamuk lecture in Portland, OR

Just read the notes on the Pamuk lecture in Portland, Oregon by James Tata.

The fact that he's distanced himself from the American Congress statement on the nearly century old Armenian genocide, saying that it's an internal matter is only slightly disappointing. Turkey is under enormous strain right not. Turkish troops entering northern Iraq, into Kurdish controlled regions, are going to cause even more strain between American and Turkish relations. As much as i loathe to say it, i'm not sure that making this an issue at this moment in history in Congress of all the times it has been and will be possible is all that wise. Bush might actually be right.

(I can be convinced otherwise though.)

As an American, my favorite Pamuk book is The Black Book, not Snow, and oddly, i believe that prefer the Guneli Gup translation to the Maureen Freely one.

Want to know a dirty little secret of mine? Of Pamuk's greatest novelists, Tolstoy, Mann, Dostoevsky, and Proust, i have read only Dostoevsky, and of him, only Notes from Underground and The Idiot. I barely remember either one, as those were in my chemical years.

more Enrique Vila-Matas

Just ran across a blog post translating some Spanish article of Enrique Vila-Matas talking about writing.

I'm trying to figure out if any of his recent works are coming in English translation soon, París no se acaba nunca (2003,) Doctor Pasavento (2005,) Exploradores del abismo (2007.)

Exploradores del abismo

Conversational Reading has news on a review on the latest from Vila-Matas... in Spanish. It's somewhat beyond my reading comprehension unfortunately, but one day... one day... i won't have to sit around whining about why Spanish language literature is not readily available in English translation.

I stalled out on Montano's Malady weeks back. It's almost as good as Bartleby & Co.

translating Bulgakov

Damn it to hell... i finally read The Master & Margarita earlier this year. Although it had been recommended to me dozens of times, it was usually recommended by kids who played Vampire: The Masquerade who fancied themselves as libertine iconoclasts. They also had good things to say about Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible and wore pewter pentacles around their necks. I cannot count how many cats that i've met named Behemoth. There was no fucking way that I was going to read Bulgakov.

Another debate has erupted over which is the superior translation of the book, and this time, i actually give damn. Unfortunately, the translation that i've read is the Burgin & O'Connor translation, which suited me just fine as i now love the book, but i ain't got a horse in this race.

Despite the number of books that i read that are in translation, the only non-epic poem ones that i recall intentionally reading in different translations are Don Quixote and The Arabian Nights oddly. And the Bible. Ach.

via 3%.

The House of Silence

This story about Pamuk's The House of Silence being translated into Russian popped up. It is Pamuk's first book. It's described at length in this review of The White Castle from 1991. So now it's in translation in Russian, French, and Spanish.

Is it any great demand to ask for it in English?

still waiting for Borges

Damn it! Still no word on when the Bioy Casares biography of Borges makes it into English translation? All of this bitchy letter writing has me itching. The more i know about Borges the man, the more i think he's a bastard, but the Bioy Casares has me ready to explore new complexities of his character, when before, i was ready to divorce his work from his life entirely.