Great Translations of 2009
NPR posts their 5 picks for best foreign fiction this year. A nice idea, but would have liked to see more.
Here are a few other 2009 releases I read in translation this year and would highly recommend:
Homage to Czerny by Gert Jonke [Dalkey Archive]
The Other City by Michal Ajvaz [Dalkey Archive]
With Deer by Aase Berg (trans. Johannes Göransson) [Black Ocean]
Tranquility by Attila Bartis [Archipelago]
Killing Kanoko by Hiromi Ito [Action Books]
Jerusalem by Goncalo M. Tavares [Dalkey Archive]
Conquest of the Useless by Werner Herzog [HarperCollins]
Babyfucker by Urs Allemann [Les Figues]
Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard [Vintage]
What are some of your favorite translations or works from nonamerican authors from this year?
Hey, Seattle Readers!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6_VAiznSTc
Harvey Sid Fisher is playing the Jewelbox Theater tonight. Kills me that I already have plans.
Harvey Sid Fisher is better than 90% of American fiction.
(If you are from elsewhere in Washington state or Oregon, there is probably still time to get on the road for this show.)
Holiday Lists
Do people still make Christmas lists? Or Hanukkah lists or something other? Most years I am asked by family to procure one so they have some idea beyond candy or whatever. Usually the lists are mostly books and clothes. This year I asked for
The Lost Origins of the Essay edited by John D’Agata
The Drug of Art by Ivan Blatny
Three Novellas by Thomas Bernhard
a by Andy Warhol
The Mandarin by Aaron Kunin
Cinema 1 by Gilles Deleuze
The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis by Mark Gluth
and I think a pair of shoes.
What books are on your freakin’ Xmas list, or your whatever-holiday-you-like list, or if you don’t mess with that mess, what would be if you did?
Here’s Some Stuff That’s Out There
The Rumpus has an interview with Eileen Myles!
Ange Mlinko on Rilke at The Nation.
There’s a new issue of Mike Topp’s Stuyvesant Bee. (pdf download)
Here’s Tolstoy’s epilogue to The Kreutzer Sonata. I just read that story for the first time, and thought it was brilliant how vividly Tolstoy detailed the main character’s delusions, obsessions, and psychosis. Then I discovered that Tolstoy actually meant the story as a kind of polemic, and that his character’s deranged views were actually delivered in earnest, being more or less Tolstoy’s own. Sigh.
Slate’s got a new Robert Pinsky column, on Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, and how they were complainers.
Also, here is a Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time walkthru from IGN.com. A couple months ago I found an old Zelda cartridge and started playing a saved game I left unfinished 12 or 13 years ago. I have completed all the temples for adult Link (without the walkthru, btw) and am now trying to figure out which 2 of the 4 bottle quests I have already completed, and which still need doing, because I want to go into Ganon’s Castle fully prepared. Oh fuck, I also need ice arrows. Eesh.
Front Matter/Back Matter
From TS Eliot’s Introduction to In Parenthesis by David Jones:
A work of literary art which uses the language in a new way or for a new purpose, does not call for many words from the introducer. All that one can say amounts only to pointing towards the book, and affirming its importance and permanence as a work of art. The aim of the introducer should be to arouse the curiosity of a possible new reader. To attempt to explain, in such a note as this, is futile. Here is a book about the experiences of one soldier in the War of 1914-18. It is also a book about War, and about many other things also, such as Roman Britain, the Arthurian Legend, and divers matters which are given association by the mind of the writer. And as for the writer himself, he is a Londoner of Welsh and English descent. He is decidedly a Briton. He is also a Roman Catholic, and he is a painter who has painted some beautiful pictures and designed some beautiful lettering. All these facts about him are important. Some of them appear in his own Preface to this book; some the reader may discover in the course of reading.
How important is the front matter and back matter of a book to you? Do you read introductions by translators and others before you read a book? Or after you’ve read the book? Do you care much about what another person writes in an afterword? Has the name of an introducer ever helped you to purchase a book? What are some introductions/prefaces/afterwords that particularly stand out in your mind as interesting?
How to become the most famous author in the world, a guest post by Mark Baumer
Mark Baumer, of Everyday Yeah and the Brown MFA blog, writes in with some tips on writing gleaned from what last week or the week before was the #1 movie in America…
John Cusack or Jackson Curtis wrote a book called Farewell Atlantis. In the year 2012, according to the movie 2012, it will become the most famous book in the world. Everything I’ve read about Jackson Curtis leads me to believe he was very forward thinking. It was obvious from watching the movie that he had planned his rise in the publishing game long before the world came to an end and flooded and repositioned itself despite an original print run of less than 500 copies.
Here is a list of everything Jackson Curtis did to become the world’s most famous author. I’d like to point out that this list doubles as a nice how-to guide for becoming the most famous living author after the world has killed itself.
1. A few days before the end of the world wake up late and make excuses about the traffic when your ex-wife calls and asks why you having picked up the kids yet.
2. Take the limo when your Jeep doesn’t start.
3. Wave to the plastic surgeon dude who is boning your ex-wife only because his skills are important later in the movie.
4. Drive limo to Yellowstone National Park while singing songs with daughter in the front seat. Ignore your son in the backseat. He is being a little douche bag. Let him listen to the music. Don’t worry, he won’t be completely useless his whole life.
5. At Yellowstone, climb over fences marked with trespassing signs. Ignore the dead elks roasting on the former lake where you and your wife used to have sex.
6. Make friends with the head scientist for the United States who is leading up the investigation on the end of the world. This will only be possible if the head scientist’s father has already read your book and has given it to his son. Make sure the father of the head scientist investigating the end of the world has read your book before you trespass at Yellowstone.
7. Ask your daughter if she still wets the bed.
8. Hang out in Woody Harrelson’s camper. Take his last beer.
9. Bring kids home early when ex-wife freaks out over an earthquake at the supermarket.
10. Don’t believe the government when they say, “The worst is over.”
Thanksgiving 2009
(thanks Justin Sirois)
Blake Butler—
This is kind of amazing: some kid is suing World of Warcraft, partially, he claims, because it has contributed to his sense of alienation, and he has subpoenaed one of the dudes from Depeche Mode, “since he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes.” He’s also called on Wynona Ryder because of her sometime talking about how she loved The Catcher in the Rye, and “how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live [sic] / video games such as World of Warcraft.” Makes sense to me…
9
Thanks–again–Alice Townes!
To see this at a more reasonable size go here or just click the picture.
To learn more about the history of Cuil Theory.
Toilet Reading
Do you read on the toilet? If so, what kinds of books do you read on the toilet? Is there a set of criteria that you have in mind when selecting a book to read on the toilet? Do you sometimes stand at your bookshelf and stare at your books and struggle to select just the right book to read on the toilet? Does it take so much time that you sometimes risk having an accident right there in front of your bookshelf? Or do you keep a book next to the toilet to avoid such confusion? When on the toilet, do you read a new book or a book you’ve already read? If you do read on the toilet, what was the last book you read on the toilet? Or do you already have a list of books to read on the toilet? Do you ever read a book on the toilet and think ‘haha, I’m reading on the toilet’? Have you ever been reading a book on the toilet and not stood up from the toilet after you were finished because you got so into the book that you couldn’t stop reading on the toilet? Is it possible that there exists out there a perfect book to read on the toilet?