Chekhov's Mistress
Reading the World: Update
Back in March I wrote about the then upcoming “Reading the World” project, “a collaboration between publishers and booksellers to promote literature in translation.” I first learned about it from Robert Gray’s Weblog, “Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller’s Journal.” He’s reading and commenting on the books on the list and the idea has gotten some traction in the press and in the bloga href=“http://rakesprogress.typepad.com/rakes_progress/2005/05/just_the_thing_.html”>osphere.
The writer’s organization Pen has dubbed May “World in Translation Month,” and this project is a perfect actualization of Pen’s celebration. The brainchild of Chad Post* at Dalkey Archive Press, “Reading the World” hopes to create new conversations on global literature. The Center For Book Culture is promoting the project through a newly launched Web-site that has a list of the many bookstores involved as well as a short synopsis on every title chosen, a list of the publishers and news updates.
A Publisher’s Weekly article compares the effort to
…National Poetry Month… described as “a result of an ongoing conversation about how to sell poetry better that has slowly gotten it into the hands of more readers.”
Which is funny because I was thinking of this project in the same vain. While I think it’s a great idea, it’s too bad that something so great, like poetry, has to be “promoted” in the first place. Of course, unlike poetry, there is no crisis of reading books in translation because we’ve never read a lot of ‘farn’ books here. And, as with National Poetry Month, I think we should declare it the Literature in Translation “Millenium.” But I’m crazy that way.
Getting in the spirit of things, I will be reviewing one of the books below (I won’t say which) at “Conversational Reading” next week, and I think Scott will too. I have several of the titles on the list and others I’ve read in the past. So, I’ll try to pull them out and comment on them here to the extent that I can (With my own little literature in translation project, 400 Windmills, I’m not sure how much time I will have to comment thoughtfully). There’s no reason not to extend the project, at least informally, into the blog world, as Mr. Gray has done.
Besides, I don’t think there’s a book on the list that doesn’t look compelling in some way and the choices are a good combination of old and new, popular and obscure. I remember the first time I went into a bookstore looking for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I was bumbling the name, but fortunately the bookseller knew it and acted as though people came in every day looking for it. Now I’ll never forget it.
Here in New York, some of my favorite bookstores, Gotham Book Mart and Three Lives and Co. are participating as well as St. Marks Bookshop and the NYU Bookstore. Each is committed to stocking and placing the books out on display. You may also buy the books directly from the publishers or on-line, particularly at Powells.com, who is a participant,
Here again is a list of the books with links to the publishers and each title is linked to its page at Powells.com:
Lenz by Georg Büchner (Germany), trans. by Richard Sieburth
Bacacay by Witold Gombrowicz (Poland), trans. by Bill Johnston
Education by Stone by João Cabral de Melo Neto (Brazil), trans. by Richard Zenith
A Dream of Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu (Russia), trans. by Yazhbin Chavasse
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich (Ukraine), trans. by Keith Gessen
Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara (Serbia), trans. by Ana Lučić
Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante (Cuba), trans. by Suzanne Jill levine/Donald Gardner/author
Thank You for Not Reading by Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia), trans. by Celia Hawkesworth/Damion Searls
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandyr Solzhenitsyn (Russia), trans. by H.T. Willetts
The Collected Poems (Federico García Lorca (Spain), trans. by Christopher Maurer
Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (Germany), trans. by Edward Snow
The Vagabond by Colette (France), trans. by Judith Thurman
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Japan), trans. by Philip Gabriel
Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), trans. by Maureen Freely
Liquidation by Imre Kertész (Hungary), trans. by Tim Wilkinson
Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi (Iran), trans. by Anjali Singh
The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida (Cape Verde), trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser
By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño (Chile), trans. by Chris Andrews
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald (Germany), trans. by Michael Hulse
A Heart So White by Javier Marías (Spain), trans. by Margaret Jull Costa
* Link is to a WSJ article on Mr. Post (via Conversational Reading)
Read widely, think well, and write often
comments
Not just poetry but all good books should need no bush, but i wonder if the scatter-shot approach will work—even the Pen Club can not substitute for reviews in the papers and magazines read by millions.
Is there no way we can get the major papers to increase and improve their book reviews?
There is no substitute. My books have been given wonderful reviews in magazines such as Modern Haiku, Metamorphoses, LYNX, etc but the effect on sales has been minimal.
I am thinking of a lawsuit based on the First Ammendment. Is it not discrimination to reject self-published work out of hand? But, in that case, i note that not only the NYT but the itty-bitty-bloggers play the same game. Why should musicians be the only people who produce themselves? What is wrong with being an author-publisher? The only rules should be 1) is the book really good? 2)is it orderable at a decent price?
It hurts to hear people advising me to spend time on pr when every minute i do that means not writing something only i can write!
“Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!”
– robin d gill (05/08 at 04:43 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: May 05, 2005
- Filed Under:
Translation
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
