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The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 29 February 2012

21 February: Is translation interpretation ? The Supreme Court decides ! | Sebhat Gebre Egziabher (1928-2012) | Leela's Book review
22 February: Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists | Andrey Kurkov on tour | March/April World Literature Today | Enhanced e-books
23 February: Bookselling in ... India | The end of the 'Great American Novel' ? | Mating review
24 February: 'Literature in times of crisis' | "Chateaubriand complex" | Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year shortlist | Publishing in ... the US | Five A.M. review
25 February: Luttwak on the Iliad | Isle of the Dead review
26 February: Pak Kyung-ni's Land | State of the Site 2011 report
27 February: Writing in ... the Philippines | Shohbaa De profile | The Mystery of Dr.Fu-Manchu review
28 February: Best Translated Book Award longlist announced | Swiss book-pricing referendum | Rossica Prize longlist | The Crimes of Elagabalus review
29 February: Review coverage by and of women | Ethiopian PEN | Ivry on Joseph Roth's Letters | The Letter Killers Club review

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       Review coverage by and of women

       VIDA presents The 2011 Count, where they look at: "the rates of publication between women and men in many of our writing world's most prestigious literary outlets" -- i.e. the sex-ratio re. number of articles, book reviewers, and authors reviewed. The graphic pie charts show the ugly results.
       Obviously, I'm close to the last person who should weigh in on this (though I'm ... pleased ? to see that The New Republic is giving me an impressive run for the money ...), as I've been wondering for nearly a decade now How Sexist are We ? -- and haven't found the rate of reviewed authors who are women to fluctuate much beyond an historic average of around 15%. (As I noted last time around, part of the excuse I have hereabouts is that translated fiction tends to be overwhelming male-authored (also a problem, of course ...) -- around 80% in 2010, apparently, and a very quick and rough count of the books eligible for the Best Translated Book Award puts the female-authored count at about 22% for 2011, barely any better (which is also a reason why women are underrepresented among the longlisted titles for the Best Translated Book Award (see below) -- though less so among the translators of the longlisted books).)
       Oddly, coverage has been much more female-welcoming at the complete review recently -- 18 of last 50 books reviewed were authored by women, far above the long-term rate -- even as I don't think I've been doing anything differently.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Ethiopian PEN

       At Ezega.com Meron Tekleberhan reports on An International Organization Promoting Literature Opens Center in Ethiopia, as Ethiopia gets its own PEN Centre.
       Good to hear that:

PEN will exert effort to translate Ethiopian works of literature into international and national languages said Solomon. The association will also work to advance the ability of Ethiopian authors to profit from their labors which is rarely the case noted Solomon.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Ivry on Joseph Roth's Letters

       In Tragic in Novels, Lucky in Friends in the Forward Benjamin Ivry raises some interesting questions about the new English translation (by Michael Hofmann) of Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters (see the publicity pages at W.W.Norton and Granta, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) -- most notably: why the hell did they rely on that particular German edition (and why didn't they know any better ?):

These and other missing words in Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters might be explained by a translator's preface dated January 2011, which, although noting the inadequacies of Kesten's edition and how it is "a little strange" that no better edition exists, adds, "Kesten, though, was not a scholar -- and nor am I." This candid admission does not explain how in a university setting Hofmann managed to avoid hearing or reading about the ongoing project of a new edition of the Roth-Zweig letters in his homeland. Or even traveling to Fredonia, N.Y., where all of Roth's surviving messages to Zweig repose in the Daniel Reed Library of S.U.N.Y., Fredonia, readily available for consultation.

       Too bad; Roth deserves better.

       (Updated - 2 March): See now also Gabriel Josipovici's review in the New Statesman; he also has some issues with the book.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       The Letter Killers Club review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's The Letter Killers Club.

       (This book, too, was obviously in the running to make the longlist for the Best Translated Book Award announced yesterday (see my previous mention); amazingly, however, New York Review Books -- which had last year's winning title, and publishes many fine books in translation -- was entirely shut out this year.)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Best Translated Book Award longlist announced

       The 25-title strong longlist for the Best Translated Book Award has now been announced, and the finalists are:

• Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion ? by Johan Harstad
• Demolishing Nisard by by Eric Chevillard
• Fiasco by Kertész Imre
• Funeral for a Dog by Thomas Pletzinger
• I Am a Japanese Writer by Dany Laferrière
• In Red by Magdalena Tulli
• Kafka’s Leopards by Moacyr Scliar
• Kornél Esti by Kosztolányi Dezső
• Leeches by David Albahari
• Lightning by Jean Echenoz
• Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec
• Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas
• New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani
• Private Property by Paule Constant
• Purgatory by Tomás Eloy Martínez
• Scars by by Juan José Saer
• Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz
• Seven Years by Peter Stamm
• The Shadow-Boxing Woman by Inka Parei
• Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski
• Suicide by Edouard Levé
• The Truth About Marie by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
• Upstaged by Jacques Jouet
• Zone by Mathias Énard

       I am one of the judges for the prize, so I played a role in the decision-making process (obviously, as you can tell from the absence of 1Q84 and the inclusion of several titles which I was less than enthusiastic about in my reviews, my voice only carried so much weight ...).
       A lot of really good stuff here -- though it is shocking to see not a single non-European language represented.
       (I did okay in guessing what would make the list ten months ago: five of my eight guesses made it (and I remain surprised that 1Q84 didn't ...).)
       I am looking forward to comparing this with what we'll find on the longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize -- due out 8 March -- even though that has slightly different criteria: the BTBA welcomes dead authors; the IFFP doesn't -- but apparently does consider re-translated works, which the BTBA doesn't (of course not too many living authors get books translated more than once during their lifetimes) -- and the published-in-US (BTBA) vs. published-in-UK (IFFP) requirement still makes for a very different pool of books that can be considered for the respective prizes.

       Odd fact: a stunning five of these titles were reviewed at the complete review -- based on the French or German original, or a German translation -- before they were translated into English -- in some cases long before -- two of them a decade or more ago: Fiasco in 2002, and The Shadow-Boxing Woman all the way back in 2000 !

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Swiss book-pricing referendum

       The Swiss are still conflicted about legally mandating fixed book prices, and so it's one of five questions that will be up for popular vote in the upcoming 11 March referendum.
       Martin Walker makes his position clear in a UPI piece, The threat to books -- arguing that:

The question is simple: Should all bookshops be required to charge the same price for books or should the free market prevail, allowing large chains and supermarkets to sell books at big discounts that small and independent bookstores cannot afford ?

       Well, when you put it that way it does sound simple ...; in fact it is a bit more complicated (starting with the whole fixed-price idea, which actually isn't set-in-stone fixed, either; see all the (German) parliamentary documentation, which includes a link to a pdf of the law at issue).
       At swissinfo.ch Urs Geiser and Sonia Fenazzi report on the upcoming vote in Buying Swiss books comes at a price -- noting also that:

Switzerland with its German-, French- and Italian-language regions has never had a uniform book price regulation. The small Italian-language sector has always been free, while the French-language and the main German-language markets repealed their price agreements in the early 1990s and in 2007 respectively.

       The Swiss media is already full of discussions of this -- and that looks likely to continue for the next two weeks.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Rossica Prize longlist

       I missed this when they announced it a couple of weeks ago, but the 37-title strong longlist for the Rossica Prize for the best translated work from Russian (2009 through 2011) is out -- and seems to include pretty much every Russian literary work translated into English in the past three years, including both translations of Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf (I've only reviewed the one), as well as the 2010 Best Translated Book Award winner for poetry, Elena Fanailova's The Russian Version.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       The Crimes of Elagabalus review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Martijn Icks on The Life and Legacy of Rome's Decadent Boy Emperor, The Crimes of Elagabalus.

       This is actually one of two big recent Elagabalus books -- Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado's The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction ? came out in 2010 from Cambridge University Press (see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk), and Icks even reviewed it, at Sehepunkte.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Writing in ... the Philippines

       In the Philippine Daily Inquirer Amadís Ma. Guerrero reports on the recent 2012 Taboan writers fest: Is literature alive and well ?
       Among the participants: F. Sionil José -- who stirred things up nicely by observing:

"We are shallow, mababaw ang kaligayahan," he declared. "We are a weak and corrupted nation. This is a challenge all writers must face."

       On the other hand, apparently there was also a consensus that:

Writing is more fun in the Philippines.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Shohbaa De profile

       In the Express Tribune's Sunday Magazine Mohsin Sayeed profiles A cat called Shohbaa -- i.e. Shohbaa De.
       I actually have a pile of her books, and hope to get to them at some point; I do think her natural métier is the schlock-pulp, so I really hope she doesn't take the concluding sentences to heart:

From socio-political issues to religio-cultural topics, gender politics to bodypolitik, Shohbaa De eloquently describes and puts things in perspective like a historiographer. All that remains is for her to translate all this knowledge and understanding into a social history book or a novel about contemporary India -- a book that makes her graduate from item number girl to a substantial, artistic, serious performer of the written word.

       Shohbaa De as historiographer ? 'Serious performer of the written word' ? Dear god, haven't we endured enough ? Let her -- and us -- stick to the kind of entertainments she knows and does best .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       The Mystery of Dr.Fu-Manchu review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Sax Rohmer's The Mystery of Dr.Fu-Manchu.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Pak Kyung-ni's Land

       In The Japan Times David Cozy reviews A quintessential Korean epic to rival the very best of Tolstoy -- Land by Pak Kyung-ni; see also the Brill publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       I've mentioned this title a couple of times, and it has gotten some attention -- Margaret Drabble reviewed it in the TLS last year (issue of 22 June; not freely accessible online) -- but it still seems not to have really caught on. Of course the first part of the first part of this came out some fifteen years ago, and despite some decent reviews ... well, K.Connie Kang's hope in her 1996 review in The Los Angeles Times seems not quite to have panned out:

For admirers of Korean literature, the publication of Park's voluminous masterpiece in English is a welcome event. The West has ignored Korean writers for too long, much as it has the country itself, which has lived in the shadows of its powerful neighbors, China and Japan. With the appearance of Land, perhaps that will begin to change.

       I hope to get my hands on a copy, eventually .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       State of the Site 2011 report

       I've finally gotten around to putting up the report for the State of the Site 2011.
       Lots of odds and ends, maybe some information of interest.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Luttwak on the Iliad

       Edward Luttwak's review of Stephen Mitchell's translation of The Iliad, Homer Inc, in the current London Review of Books offers some fun Homer-in-translation observations -- along with a nice take-down of Mitchell's efforts.
       Among the problems with this particular version:

Mitchell took it on himself to produce and circulate an Iliad that is improperly abridged, indeed mutilated.

       Unfortunately, of course, such mutilation is -- in the name of 'editing' -- a far too common occurrence with translations (and generally it's the publisher who is responsible, not, as here, the translator).

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Isle of the Dead review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Gerhard Meier's Isle of the Dead.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       'Literature in times of crisis'

       At Deutsche Welle Anila Shuka reports on a recent panel discussion where Greek author Petros Markaris, Hungarian Dalos György, and Albanian Lindita Arapi discussed Literature in times of crisis.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       "Chateaubriand complex"

       The Telegraph wonders Why do French candidates feel the need to publish their own books ?
       It's so popular that:

French author Patrick Rambaud describes the urge to publish as the "Chateaubriand complex" -- after the 19 century French Romantic and author of interminable memoirs. "A book is a bit like a Rolex for our politicians: if you haven't got your own by 50, you're a failure," he says.

       Of course, books by and about American politicians supposedly in the running for the presidency also abound every election season .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year shortlist

       At The Bookseller Philip Stone reports that they've announced the shortlist for their Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Publishing in ... the US

       In The New York Times Julie Bosman reports that Book Is Judged by the Name on Its Cover, another sad example of how American publishing 'works', as Patricia O'Brien -- author of five novels -- couldn't sell her new novel until, after twelve rejections, her agent submitted it under a pseudonym.
       Judging the manuscript's merit on the basis of the sales-numbers for O'Brien's previous work no one wanted to touch it ..... And American publishers wonder why they're doing so well .....
       Seriously, how is one supposed to take this business seriously ?

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Five A.M. review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jean Dutourd's Five A.M..
       Hey, back in the day it was Saul Bellow that reviewed this for The New York Times Book Review .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Bookselling in ... India

       In The Bookseller Charlotte Williams reports that Indian book market in "rapid growth", as:

The Indian book market grew by 45% in volume and 40% in value over the first half of 2011, with adult fiction the fastest-growing area of the market, according to Nielsen BookScan India figures as the panel marks its first full year of sales monitoring

       (Yes, the fact that it's only: "its first full year of sales monitoring" means the numbers are probably fudged a bit; nevertheless .....)
       Good to see also that:

Adult fiction was the fastest growing area of the market over the first half of 2011, growing by 82% in volume and 49% in value

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       The end of the 'Great American Novel' ?

       In the Weekly Standard Roger Kimball wonders about The Great American Novel -- specifically; 'Will there ever be another ?'
       He observes:

I think that most of us would agree that, today, fiction exercises a different, and less vital, claim on our attention than it once did. Such, anyway, has been my observation. And I would go further. It's not just contemporary fiction that is suffering from this form of existential depreciation: The same thing, I believe, is happening, perhaps to a lesser extent, with the fiction of the past. The novel plays a different and a diminished role in our cultural life as compared with even the quite recent past.

       Possibly -- but I refuse to accept that .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Mating review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Norman Rush's 1991 National Book Award-winning novel, Mating.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists

       At Jacket Copy Carolyn Kellogg reports 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists announced -- and lists all of them.
       Very few are under review at the complete review -- just: Is That a Fish in Your Ear ? by David Bellos and The Information by James Gleick; there's also a review-overview of The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Andrey Kurkov on tour

       Andrey Kurkov's The Case of the General's Thumb is just out in the US from Melville House -- see their publicity page, or that at Vintage (UK), or get your copy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk; I don't have a copy yet, but I hope to be able to get to it soon.
       He's doing a couple of US events -- of which the most interesting-sounding is his lecture, The Ukraine as a Novel with Strong Plot and Weak Characters, tomorrow (23 February) at noon at the International Affairs Building, Columbia University.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       March/April World Literature Today

       The March/April issue of World Literature Today is now available, with a limited amount of the content -- including some of the reviews -- available online.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Enhanced e-books

       At The Economist's Prospero weblog A.C. finds Truly moving literature in writing about 'Enhanced e-books'.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Is translation interpretation ? The Supreme Court decides !

       Yes, on today's American Supreme Court docket (i.e. oral arguments will be presented today) is Kouichi Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., where the question presented (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) (the fundamental legal question at issue) is:

Section 1920 of 28 U.S.C. sets out the categories of costs that may be awarded to the prevailing party in a federal lawsuit. One of the listed categories is "compensation of interpreters." Id. § 1920(6).

The question presented is whether costs incurred in translating written documents are "compensation of interpreters" for purposes of section 1920(6).

       Why is this of interest ? Because the leading case on the issue is the Seventh District Court's decision in Extra Equipamentos e Exportação Ltda. v. Case Corp. (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), where no one less than Richard Posner held:

the translator of a document is not referred to as an interpreter. Robert Fagles made famous translations into English of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, but no one would refer to him as an English language "interpreter" of these works

       Law 'n' lit man Posner should, of course, know a lot better -- lots of folk (me among them) do very much consider Fagles an interpreter of these texts, as much as their translator, and indeed many literary translators do consider themselves (or should ...) interpreters of texts. (It's a horrible example, and a rare big slip by Posner, who should know better: there was no need to bring up literary translation in the context of this particular case (nor in Kouichi Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., which is his only hope of not being made to look the fool by the justices ...), but apparently he just couldn't help himself .....)
       The Scotusblog page should keep you up to date on the case -- and see also Peter Landers' Lost in Interpretation: Japan Citizen Case Goes to Supreme Court at the Wall Street Journal's Japan Realtime.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Sebhat Gebre Egziabher (1928-2012)

       Ethiopian author Sebhat Gebre Egziabher (ስብሐት ገብረ እግዚአብሔር) has passed away; see, for example, the News Dire report, The famous Ethiopian author Sibhat gebregziabher has passed away.
       The only title of his available in English translation (and that barely -- Amazon doesn't seem to have it) is Seed (of course it's under review at the complete review ...). Of course, of greater interest would be something like ሌቱም፡ አይነጋልኝ -- published in French as Les Nuits d'Addis-Abeba; see the Actes Sud publicity page, get your copy (maybe ...) at Amazon.fr, or see this review at Le Litteraire.

       (Updated - 22 February): See now also Seble Teweldebirhan's Literary Legend Sebhat Gebre-Egziabiher Passes Away, and Abdourahman A. Waberi's (French) review of Les Nuits d'Addis-Abeba in Le Monde diplomatique.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Leela's Book review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Alice Albinia's quite entertaining riff off and on the Mahabharata, Leela's Book, now also available in the US.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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