How to fucking format a multi-page poetry/flash manuscript in MS Word
On a PC, hit CTRL-Enter. On a Mac I think it’s more difficult. You have to go to Edit > Insert Page or something like that.
Please, don’t hit return a million times. I will kill you.
20 Important Books in Other Languages; or, “a list always growing longer”
A post re:– neither repost nor riposte–Blake’s wichtige Liste and (only at first) about Infinite Jest in German. Maybe a chair is a good metaphor for who gets translated. Have you been translated? Have the Important Writers on Blake’s list? And not 25 because Saramago, Ouredník, and Zizek are already others, Ben Lerner’s a poet, Aase Berg’s both, and I’ll write about poets in translation and translation in poets at an other time.
Not sure if anyone went there during all the well DFW grammar talk (thanks, Amy), but imagine translating, say, Oblivion. Good that one of Wallace’s German translators, Ulrich Blumenbach, did just that, presumably (it first appeared in 2006), while whittling away at Infinite Jest, which took him six years and has had, as Unendlicher Spass (literally, the less Shakespearean Unending Fun), endless success: ten times the expected five grand copies have been sold since it appeared at the end of August, on the heels of Infinite Summer, which the publisher, KiWi, has translated too, as 100 Days of Infinite Jest (in German–it ended on 12-1).
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Blumenbach (pictured–in German) regrets that the author never answered his many questions, “a list always growing longer”: it seems Wallace had grown weary of taking translator’s queries, and, according to The Complete Review’s useful paraphrase of a slippery summary (still looking for the original source), considered the Spanish La broma infinita (tr. Calvo and Covian | Mondadori, 2002) and the Italian Infinite Jest (Nesi w/ Villoresi and Giua | Einaudi, 2006) and apparently other attempts (anyone know more?) to have “all failed, more or less.”
In a warm war, France is responding with (900 pp. of) Vollmann’s Rising (not translated by the great Claro, see below, who did six previous tomes, but by one Jean-Paul Mourlon, translator, it seems, of Jimmy Carter and Hilary Clinton). There’s also German Vollmann (3 titles), Spanish Vollmann (3 more), Japanese Vollmann (2), Greek Vollmann (2), and Czech Vollmann, all (not counting the French) with only one title (Butterfly Stories) repeated.
American Genius is only a Great American Novel for now (does it even have a British publisher?), despite Tillman’s first book of stories, Tagebuch einer Masochisten, having appeared in Germany in 1986, four years before her first collection in English, READ MORE >
Keith Gessen: Anti-Top 3 Top 3
Here’s another lengthy-ish response to my call for Top 3’s. It comes from n+1‘s Keith Gessen and I’m short on time right now so it’s going up with no further ado. And FYI- the full List of Lists will post tomorrow.
[Keith Gessen writes] You know, a few years ago, in 2004-2005, I was the regular book critic for New York Magazine. But I was kind of irregular, and I didn’t read all that much fiction. And so when at the end of the year they asked me to write up my top three books, I said no way. Who knows what the top three books are? I said. This is a dishonest exercise.
READ MORE >
25 Important Books of Poetry of the 00s, by Brian Foley
[In continuing from my Important Books of the 00s list, which mostly intentionally swerved poetry in manner of context, the excellent and esteemable Brian Foley of Brave Men Press, Sir!, and many other objects has kindly and genuinely sent over his list of poetry-only 00s, which I am extremely stoked about. Enjoy! — BB]
At the beginning of this decade, I would not have thought I would have anything to say about poetry by its end. I was a bloated necktie who combed his hair. I was lonely. I had no dog to feed. Now there are too many dogs begging at my door, too much loneliness.
There is no universal to this list. The reality is mine, it is biographical. But I am happy to share it. I appreciate the opportunity to make this list, if for nothing else but to ruminate over what I have ruminated over. It was fun. If this list seems a little tipped toward the end of the decade, its because that’s when I began, what I consider, “reading seriously.” Though its arguable that its also when something had been passed between hands in the night and poetry once more became very interesting.
Creative Writing 101: All’s Well That Ends Well
I am writing this late on Thursday night, having just gotten back from my ~2 hour commute from Rutgers. I’ve got my shoes off and have poured myself a big fat Jim & Ginger, a solitary if not precisely lonely celebration of the end of my teaching semester, my first one as an instructor of college-level creative writing. If this were an MFA program, I probably would have insisted we adjourn our session to a bar, but since about 3/4 of the students can’t (or can’t legally) drink in a bar, I brought a box of Oreos to class.
Some of those who had been following the CRW101 threads expressed disappointment when they stopped appearing, about a month ago. As I think I explained at the time, that was because we switched from close-reading literature-discussion mode into workshopping-student-work mode, and since I made a commitment at the outset of this series not to identify individual students or subject them to public scrutiny, that didn’t leave me with a whole lot to talk about.
Q & A #1
Question 1:
I interned for a literary agency for a while. Do you think that agents are necessary for all kinds of writing, or that in some cases you can go straight to the publisher? (With fiction, I think it’s pretty well established that you need an agent no matter what.)
Meet Memphis
My wife and I just bought a puppy. We will bring him home on December 13th. We named him Memphis.