August 08, 2008

Exercises in Listing: Translations of the past 50 Years

 

If you were looking for a reading list to keep you busy you wouldn’t do much better than the Translators Association of the Society of Authors list of 50 outstanding translations of the last half century. Running chronologically, it begins with Queneau’s Exercises in Style, translated by Barbara Wright from 1958, and ends with Tolstoy’s War and Peace translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky from 2007.

There are many fabulous books on the list and equally fabulous omissions, of course (isn’t that the fun of lists, after all?). It must have been tough as it would appear the Society tried to make sure they spread the list among translators instead of favoring the few who are most often singled out. Otherwise they would have noted Pevear’s and Volokhonsky’s Dostoevsky translations, which I think in whole are more notable than the War & Peace translation. The only two seriously glaring omissions (although, give me a minute, eh) that come to mind are Edith Grossman’s Don Quixote and Andrew Hurley’s collections of Jorge Luis Borges works (the Yates and Irby translation of Labyrinths is there). There have been quite a few translations of The Master and Margarita so Michael Glenny’s version is an interesting choice. Might as well stop now.

Among the books well known and for every one I’ve read there are others I’ve never even heard of, like Josef Skvorecky’s The Engineer of Human Souls translated by Paul Wilson or Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War, translated by Frank Palmos and Phan Thanh Hao although those titles sure do sound like ones we would have known for some reason.

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I am compelled by a force deep within to assure you that Skvorecky’s ‘Engineer of Human Souls’ - which I have read in Wilson’s translation - is a wonderful novel (the rest of Skvorecky’s work is pretty good too. In fact, if I could keep the work of just one writer of Czech origin now living in exile I’d almost certainly toss Kundera aside for Skvorecky). ‘Sorrow of War’, alas, I cannot vouch for.

Incidentally, I am myself no stranger to lists of translated novels. Strangely, though, not one of my selections appears on this one…

    – G Riecke (08/11 06:59 PM)



You’ll forgive me I hope for being glib about those titles; they just sounded like books that I should’ve known but didn’t. Although, funny now that I think about it I’m a fan of Polish literature (at least the poets we know and Gombrowicz and a handful of others) but have never givenCzech literature much thought.

    – Bud Parr (08/12 12:06 PM)



great! thanks for sharing!

    – Mugabe (08/13 10:05 PM)



Skvorecky (whose ‘When Eve Was Naked’ is also highly recommended) has an entertaining way of dealing with the sadness and complexity of twentieth century Czech politics: never losing sight of the little things. Which is to say, students taking part in revolutions don’t forget the crush they have on the girl holding the flag.

I’d also put forward Jiri Grusa’s ‘The Questionnaire’ as a fine Czech novel.

    – G Riecke (08/14 01:45 PM)



Sorry to see Heaney’s Beowulf included- there have been better translations of Beowulf in the last fifty years.

    – Roger Allen (08/19 09:59 AM)


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"Exercises in Listing: Translations of the past 50 Years" was posted August 08, 2008 and written by Bud Parr.

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Recent Comments

Hi Bud,

This is so bittersweet to read. I wish U of Penn more than luck in tackling the collection and making an exhibit for the books. I can’t wait to see the store again. I used to work at Gotham (all too) briefly, from the summer of 2001 to the fall of 2002 when I was 19 and in school for illustration. The building, the books, and especially the people (I had amazing co-workers, plus some really lovely customers) have a special place in my heart. I’m was hoping the link would mention Andreas (Andy) Brown, the last owner of GBM, but no such luck.

I was going to venture a guess that if the old man you met at the store was a GBM employee it might have been Phillip Lyman, but my understanding was Mr. Lyman was notoriously well-read (and had substantial library himself) so I suppose he would not have been reading Dante for the first time when you met him. More likely it was one of our splendid customers. It happened more than once that one customer on the floor would ask me about an author or title and I would meet them with my perfectly hopeless stare ‘n stammer—until another customer that had overheard the plea would effortlessly proffer the desired answer or suggestion. I learned so much working there, from everyone, but was a pretty useless specimen while the learning percolated. One of the more useful employees (our resident poetry expert) recently got a shout-out over at the New Yorker’s book blog after being made famous at the splendiferous Kwik Meal #1 cart:

New Yorker Link

One more book nerdy bit before I cut off the nostalgia trip. The above-mentioned Marc was the first person to Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino in my hands; I read it up in the 2nd floor gallery on my lunch breaks (lunch from Kwik Meal #1, of course), surrounded by art books and Edward Gorey paraphernalia. That book took (and takes, I’ve re-read it many times) me so many places, but when I’m lucky it takes me back to Gotham’s gallery, by the 2nd floor window where the constant refrain of the gold and diamond sellers coming in through the window mingled with the dulcet tones of NPR from a radio bigger than a microwave and the smell of old paper—all unchanged almost more than a decade later. At least in my mind. It’s still one of my favorite books (and authors), ever. Marc also blessed me with recommendations of Wallace Stevens’ Palm At The End of the Mind, Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent illustrations, and my first ever NYC apartment: a little studio over in Astoria, Queens. Everyone at that store was overflowing and generous with knowledge, stories and history.

Places like Gotham do more than provide fodder for sentimental blog comment drivel though; I hope the lessons learned from the ongoing troubles are shaping a new generation of booksellers and customers that can find ways to thrive. Bookstores don’t belong in museums. Wise men fish there.

– (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
on “Well That's That”


Best wishes for the holidays, Bud.

I used to work in the Pan Am/Met Life Building in Manhattan.  I would walk over to Gotham at lunch and browse, browse, browse.  Books were the only thing I ever bought on that stree.  It’s a shame it’s gone.  Thanks for the update for those of us no longer living in NYC.  Atlanta is not so much a book haven.

Best,
Jim H.

– Jim H.
on “Well That's That”


Yeah, for all of our technology - which is great - I mean you and I are talking about this from two ends of the country - but there’s nothing like being there.

– Bud Parr
on “Well That's That”