opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 August 2024

1 August: Pushkin Press acquires Gallic Books' list | The Goldenacre review
2 August: Miles Franklin Award | Annie Le Brun (1942-2024) | Cundill History Prize longlist | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
3 August: Caine Prize shortlist
4 August: 'Coming of age'-books | Book- vs. movie-titles | Banned in Utah public schools
5 August: Pope endorses reading | Theater in ... Ukraine
6 August: Stefan Tobler Q & A | 臺灣文學獎
7 August: Großer Preis des Deutschen Literaturfonds | New in Hungarian | Waterproof books
8 August: Straelener Übersetzerpreis | Reviewing rut
9 August: Indian-English fiction and caste
10 August: Q & As: Will Evans - Jamaica Kincaid

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       Q & A: Will Evans

       At the (American) National Endowment for the Arts Blog Carolyn Coons has a Q & A with the Deep Vellum-publisher, The Artful Life Questionnaire: Will Evans (Dallas, TX).

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

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       Q & A: Jamaica Kincaid

       The latest 'The books of my life'-column at The Guardian features Jamaica Kincaid: ‘Don’t get me started on the New Testament, that celebrity magazine’.
       Among her responses:

The book I could never read again

Without a doubt, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

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

       Indian-English fiction and caste

       At ABC Rajiv Thind has an opinion piece on How Indian-English fiction became an upper-caste echo chamber -- underwritten by Western universities and publishers.
       Another reason why one should read more Indian fiction in translation .....

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

       Straelener Übersetzerpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Straelener Translation Prize -- a leading German translation prize, paying out €25,000 -- and it is translator-from-the-Czech Eva Profousová, specifically for her translation of Jáchym Topol's A Sensitive Person.

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

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       Reviewing rut

       To my embarrassment, I've hit a bit of a reviewing dry spell, finding myself unable to latch onto any book of interest for a while. I abandoned another, some 260 pages in, on Monday, and haven't gotten much past considering my next reads (casting aside one book after another, sigh); I'm having a hard time finding anything I wan't to/can sink into -- with even less patience than usual for short story and essay collections (but, alas, the *right* (for the moment) novel eludes me as well).
       There are some extra-literary factors sat play here -- I'm busy with some other things, and find myself thrown out of my routine and rhythm (as anyone who has followed the site for any length of time has surely realized, I am very much a routine person). I usually manage that better; it certainly isn't helping right now.
       Oddly, a dearth of new arrivals often leads me to struggle with settling on what I want to read -- not that I don't have enough piled up around me, but somehow I find it easier pick up something when new opportunities are steadily appearing as well; it's somehow reässuring to know that there is a steady flow ahead to look forward to (and conversely I apparently cramp up when the flow diminishes to a trickle). Currently the inflow is particularly poor -- confirming, at least to me, my sense of a correlation. (This is generally a bad time of the year for getting review copies -- it is vacation season, for publicists too -- but it's been a slow summer and a slow year overall: even last year -- the worst in ages -- I had received 175 (print) review copies by this date; this year, I've only received 114 to date (and none so far this month). Frustrating.)
       I appreciate your bearing with me. Circumstance won't permit me to go full tilt for a while yet, but I do hope to get a bit more up to speed soon.

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

       Großer Preis des Deutschen Literaturfonds

       The German literary fund has announced the 2024 winner of its Grand Prize -- formerly the Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis, an author prize that pays out €50,000 -- and it is Martina Hefter.

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

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       New in Hungarian

       At hlo they offer an overview of ten New Releases from Festive Book Week 2024.
       Always interesting to see what's being published in different markets and languages.

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

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       Waterproof books

       In The Korea Times Park Han-sol reports that Minumsa launches latest edition of award-winning waterproof book series:

First introduced in 2018, the waterproof book features non-spreading ink printed on mineral paper, which is made from recycled stone waste gathered from quarries and mines rather than wood. These pages are resistant to water damage and can return back to their original form after coming into contact with moisture, making the book suitable for reading at the beach, by the pool or in the bathtub.

       I wonder if any US/UK publishers are experimenting with this sort of thing.
       See also the publicity pages for the latest books, here and here.

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

       Stefan Tobler Q & A

       At new books in german Regan Mies has a Q & A with the translator and And Other Stories founder, in Putting Words First: an interview with Publisher and Translator Stefan Tobler.
       Among his responses -- sales numbers ! as he notes that Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World sold 13,000 copies last year.

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

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       臺灣文學獎

       They announced the winners of this year's Taiwan Literature Awards a few weeks ago and the winners got to pick up their prizes on Saturday; see, for example, the Taiwan Today report 2024 Taiwan Literature Awards winners recognized.
       The prizes are awarded in Indigenous languages, Taiwanese, and Hakka.

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

       Pope endorses reading

       The head of the Catholic Church, Jorge Mario Bergoglio -- popularly known as 'Francis' -- is known for being a reader of literature and it's good to see him continuing to spread the word: his most recent letter is the Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation.
       Among the authors he mentions and quotes are Borges (of course), T.S.Eliot, and Proust -- and he closes with a quote from Paul Celan.

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

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       Theater in ... Ukraine

       At Deutsche Welle Anna Chaika explores: Why is Ukraine's theater scene thriving amid war ? -- as it apparently is.

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

       'Coming of age'-books

       At The Guardian they have a number of authors 'recall their formative reading experiences', in: ‘A rumpled paperback showed me I was not alone’: Charlotte Mendelson, Michael Rosen and others on the books that marked their coming of age.
       Always a fun exercise.

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

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       Book- vs. movie-titles

       A bit more interesting than the usual book vs. movie-adaptation debate: at Screen Rant Ben Sherlock suggests: 10 Movie Adaptations With Better Titles Than The Books They're Based On.

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

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       Banned in Utah public schools

       As Carmen Nesbitt reports in The Salt Lake Tribune: It’s official: These 13 books are now banned from all public schools in Utah
       Yes, 'in accordance with §53G-10-103 and having met the statewide threshold of removal from 3 districts OR 2 districts and 3 charters', thirteen titles fall foul as Objective Sensitive Material and are now banned; see also the Utah State Board of Education's list (to which, I suspect, many, many titles will soon be added ...).
       Poor Sarah J. Maas dominates the list, with six of the thirteen titles, but Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and 2017 National Book Awards finalist (in the Young People's Literature category) What Girls are Made of, by Elana K. Arnold, also make the cut. Judy Blume's Forever, too !
       So what is too 'sensitive' for Utah schoolkids ? Helpfully, the Board of Education has a Sensitive Materials Flow Chart (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), so you too can determine what should be banned ! (I can't wait for the board game version -- fun for the whole family !)
       Apparently, it's (human) genitals and genital-related activity that are the tripwires: descriptions or depictions of: "human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal", "acts of human masturbation, sexual intercourse, or sodomy", and "fondling or other erotic touching of human genitals or pubic region" are the no-nos. (Interestingly, animal genitalia, masturbation, sodomy, etc. are apparently no problem -- presumably the lawmakers figured kids see all that down on the farm, so it's no big deal .....)
       (And you have to appreciate that they define the terms "description" and "depiction" (with wholesome examples from C.S.Lewis, and E.B.White's Charlotte's Web; surely something involving genitalia would have been more on point ...).)

       The obscenity of this is, of course, beyond words; I pity the poor kids of Utah; they deserve better. But fortunately they now have a convenient list of titles which are guaranteed to have genital-related content, should they be interested, and these shouldn't be too hard for them to get their hands on, even in Utah.

       (I count myself lucky, certainly at least in this regard, to have grown up in 1970s New York City, where I could buy, as a very young teen, The Anarchist Cookbook and the fat Grove paperbacks -- still the mass-market-paperback editions ! -- of de Sade's work (and even more dubious Grove titles) at the local Barnes & Noble, the original store on 18th and Fifth, without anyone batting an eye.)

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

       Caine Prize shortlist

       They've announced the five-title-strong shortlist for this year's Caine Prize for African Writing, the leading African story-prize.
       The titles were selected from over two eligible hundred stories (out of 320 entries), by authors from twenty-eight countries.
       The winner will be announced 17 September.

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

       Miles Franklin Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel award, and it is Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright.
       See also the publicity pages from Giramondo, New Directions, and And Other Stories, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.
       This was the most noteworthy omission from this year's just-announced Booker Prize longlist -- see my previous mention -- though of course we have no way of knowing whether it was actually submitted for the prize, since they don't release the list of titles actually considered .....
       I do have a copy of this and am looking forward to getting to it.

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

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       Annie Le Brun (1942-2024)

       Annie Le Brun has passed away -- as Guillaume Lecaplain and Clémence Mary write in Libération, Annie Le Brun, mort de la dernière des surréalistes.
       Several of her works have been translated into English -- including Sade: A Sudden Abyss; see also the City Lights publicity page.
       See also Karl Pollin-Dubois' From the Heart of the Void: A Conversation with Annie Le Brun in World Literature Today from 2019.

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

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       Cundill History Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Cundill History Prize -- thirteen titles.
       The shortlist will be announced 5 September.

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

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       Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

       In his review of them in the new London Review of Books A.W.Moore notes:

We now have three new English translations: by Michael Beaney for Oxford, Alexander Booth for Penguin and Damion Searls for Norton. (A fourth, by David Stern, Katia Saporiti and Joachim Schulte for Cambridge, is forthcoming.) The book came out of copyright in 2021 (seventy years after Wittgenstein's death), which is the reason new translation is possible. But it's another matter whether such a thing is desirable.

       (I only have the Searls translation -- as well as several editions of the German original.)
       Moore also notes:

First,​ this book is not just a work of philosophy, it is a work of art.

       And::

Second, thanks to the concern that the Tractatus has with language, it is a contribution to its own subject matter. Its translators must therefore ensure that their English version does not stand in overt tension with whatever messages about language Wittgenstein is attempting to convey.

       The Tractatus is, of course, endlessly fascinating, and any (attempts at) translation of it all the more so; I hope to get some coverage up myself, as well.

       Wittgenstein also figures, peripherally but repeatedly, in my novel Salome in Graz, for a variety of reasons -- and a Tractatus-nod at the end was impossible to resist, not least because, just as there are seven veils to Salome's dance in both Wilde's play and Strauss' opera, the Tractatus is structured around seven propositions.
       Wittgenstein (and his thought) were also an obvious fit with the main themes of the novel -- storytelling and translation (and language more generally). And while the personal connection -- Strauss was a visitor to the Wittgenstein-home, and apparently played piano-duets with Ludwig's brother, Paul (who then lost an arm in the war), so Ludwig likely had met and known him -- isn't really addressed, there is the amusing story of Wittgenstein's only known reaction to Strauss' Salome (and my philosopher-protagonist's ... creative interpretation of that).

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

       Pushkin Press acquires Gallic Books' list

       As The Bookseller reports, Pushkin Press expands further with acquisition of Gallic Books' list, as Pushkin Press has acquired Gallic Books' list of titles, with Gallic apparently winding down at the end of the year.
       Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog -- and her other titles -- is probably considered the big prize here, but to my mind the real treasure is the Pascal Garnier-list -- books such as How's the Pain ?.

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

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       The Goldenacre review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Philip Miller's The Goldenacre.

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

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