December 07, 2007

Translation: Excellent Reading

 

Kharms Chad Post at Three Percent has proposed a Best Translations of 2007 that naturally serves as a great to-read list. I put in a few votes: Day In Day Out by Terezia Mora, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim; The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer; The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz, Peter Dale Scott, and Alissa Valles; The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by Cesar Vallejo, translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman (confession here: I’ve read nearly all of the Herbert and a bunch of the Vallejo [it’s fairly massive at 732 pages], but my shallowness at nominating them shouldn’t take anything away from Valles’ or Eshleman’s accomplishment, which the critical establishment considers consderable).

Another great surprise: I only discovered the brilliant Soviet era writer Danil Kharms this year and see from Chad’s list that Overlook Press has published his book Today I Wrote Nothing. Bunch of others here on my reading list already, particularly the Petterson, which everyone raves about, the Cortazar because I can’t quite figure him out yet, and Amulet, another Bolaño title.

Speaking of translation, I just found The Brooklyn Rail’s site, In Translation, an on-line only venue for unpublished literary translations and a resource for authors and translators looking to collaborate.

And… Circumference Magazine, which publishes new and classic translations of poetry in bilingual format, is set to release issue number six.

Comments

Discuss this post.


Amazing finds!  An excellent list to investigate and a couple more translation sites to add to the blogroll.  It’s exciting to see more developments on the translation front.

    – amcorrea (12/10 09:44 AM)



Kharms is brilliant!  I have not seen this title, and will put it on my Amazon wishlist.  I’m also adding your blog to my favourites - a brilliant blog and an inspiration.

    – Anne Marie (01/15 11:15 AM)


Page 1 of 1 pages of comments

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

About this Post

"Translation: Excellent Reading" was posted December 07, 2007 and written by Bud Parr.

Categories:
Keyword tags:
Possibly Related:
Previous/Next:


« Back to main


random longer posts/reviews

links saved, etc.

me posting elsewhere

You'll find me posting at the
Words Without Borders Blog

my twitter

  • @ladybanks thanks!
  • @ladybanks I liked it too. here's what I wrote: http://is.gd/eNpf
  • @softskull diito @booksquare Technology books have done that for a while, I think
  • This Thursday: Words Without Borders' Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature on Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool. http://is.gd/eC5C
  • [dlevine] fixed it.. hehe here is that blog i wanted to show youhttp://tinyurl.com/a97mp7

find stuff at this site



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”