Chekhov's Mistress
Midsummer International Lit Links
It’s easy to forget that one person’s summer is another’s winter as we hit the June solstice, so today’s links are dedicated to international literature, as though we needed an excuse.
Video: Americans in Paris reading Peruvian poets at Pierre Joris’s Nomadics
Last year, when I saw Eshleman read from his translations of Vallejo alongside the likes of Sam Shepard, I found Eshleman to be the better reader (owing, I suppose to Shepard’s overdramatization and Eshleman’s living with the poems for so long). At any rate, Vallejo’s Complete Poetry is in a bilingual edition, which, I can’t help but to notice is lumped with Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems in the “Readers who bought this also bought” section of the Amazon page, so do yourself a favor and click on the “add both to cart” button.
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In the ‘this is why I love blogging’ department, my book giveway at MetaxuCafé led me to a conversation with Milan Ranisavljevic from Belgrade who blogs at While Sleepwalking. One of my favorite novels is Mesa Selimovic’s Death and the Dervish (thankfully available because of Northwestern University Press’s Unbound Europe series), which Milan also loves and probably most people in the world don’t know about.
I asked Milan about the local lit scene, which seems to be alive and well. Some of the authors he mentioned are better known like Milorad Pavic and Dubravka Ugresic, but even though Vladimir Arsenijevic’s “In the Hold” was written up in the NY Times (over a decade ago), I’d never heard of him before, as well as Zoran Zivkovic who Milan says is in the realm of fantasy but I might like if I like Borges. Another relatively well known author, whom I’ve mentioned here before, is David Albahari. I ran across Albahari’s Words Are Something Else in a used bookstore and bought it solely on the strength of the Unbound Europe cover and I keep coming back to it.
A couple of others Milan mentioned (who I may owe an apology to for quoting from an email without permission):
“I know Goran Petrovic is translated in French, German and Spanish but I’m not sure about English (his books are fantastic!);
Marko Vidojkovic is new wave, for my taste too urban, little too aggressive with quite politicized but his books are bestsellers in the region.”
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When I mentioned Daniil Kharms not long ago (who I thought was getting too much attention, if such a thing is possible) I asked if anyone could suggest some “post-perestroika Bulgakovs.” I didn’t get too many suggestions, but thinking about it led me to the ever excellent and obscure Words Without Borders site, which I discovered allows you to hone in on content based on country or language among other criteria (hats off to their smart Web developer Marc Stein). Here’s the Russian list to mine.
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Via litkicks I see there’s a new online journal Pratilipi which is in English as well as Hindi. It’s also available in print on demand.
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I hope to find 47 minutes on the longest day of the year to watch this film about Borges at UbuWeb. And, speaking of that great site, you may want to read the brief article about UbuWeb’s founder Kenneth Goldsmith at Bookforum
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On my path to being Bolaño literate I just read Amulet. In the beginning I was disappointed in what clearly seems to have been something like a prequel to Savage Detectives, but by the end I was sucked in, as usual. Early on I thought to read one Bolaño is to have read all Bolaño, but I’m beginning to think the opposite, that to read Bolaño is to read his entire work, a path that I am on.
Let me try this unfounded and perhaps even ignorant statement on you: Spanish language literature today is becoming the required reading for the literate class (whatever that is, but you know who you are) as Russian literature might have been in the 20th century, so instead of saying you’ve read your Dostoevsky for credibility (although you will have done that anyway) you will say you’ve read your Bolaño. Any comments?
comments
I think it is because Eurocentric tastes are so commonplace, and not enough is talked about people who write in the Spanish language. Whatever is talked about is dominated by Marquez and magical realism.
I loved Amulet. I was instantly pulled in, despite the fact it did not feature any gun fights or secret conspiracies bent on world domination. I don’t plan on reading more books from Bolano, however. I really want to read Jose Donoso next instead.
– (06/29 at 05:58 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: June 20, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
