|
|
Friday, January 30th, 2004
Reading After the New Economy, my first reaction is that it's far less dry and uninteresting than I found Wall Street (counter to expectations) to be. I reckon this is probably indicative of a change in my abilities to comprehend rather than in Henwood's writing style, so I should probably go back to Wall Street sometime. Of course, another distinction between the two books is that After the New Economy has more direct personal relevance to my situation. Update: I seem to have taken to singing, in a Jim Morrison whine/moan, "After the new econ'my, turn out the lights..." -- Alas! When phrases get stuck in my head they can hang around for weeks, sucking up resources which could otherwise be better used...
posted afternoon of January 30th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about After the New Economy
|  |
Thursday, January 29th, 2004
So here is the plan for the next few weeks, reading- and woodworkingwise: On the train to and from work, I am going to be reading After the New Economy by Doug Henwood until I finish it, then Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, which I bought today for Ellen -- I believe she will be finished with it by the time I want it. Come home in the evening, play with Sylvia, have dinner, recreate, put Sylvia to bed. Then I will go downstairs and work on a dust collection harness for my lathe -- or when that is finished, on Ellen's bookcase or turning projects. Then come back up and read Don Quixote for an hour or so before bed. This makes it difficult to figure when I will post my reactions to DQ but I will try and make some room for that as well.
posted evening of January 29th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about Nickeled and Dimed
|  |
Wednesday, January 28th, 2004
I went to Coliseum Books today in search of Don Quixote. Coliseum is sold out of Don Quixote but should have a new shipment delivered tomorrow morning. I took the opportunity to buy Doug Henwood's After the New Economy instead.
posted afternoon of January 28th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about Don Quixote
| |
Monday, January 26th, 2004
I am reading Terry Castle's review of Edith Grossman's new translation of Don Quixote, and thinking I should read it. I read the book, or large parts of it, in college, in Walter Starkie's translation, but it never really hit me -- I never had the DQ experience that I was expecting based primarily on some stuff I had read by Borges. Time to go back to it? I think so -- and Castle sure makes this new translation sound worthwhile.
posted evening of January 26th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about Miguel de Cervantes
|  |
Thursday, December 25th, 2003
Well actually here I am at home this morning, might as well write a post I've been thinking of for a few days. It concerns translation so I will ask LanguageHat to link to it. First topic: I found a book on my shelf the other day while looking for train reading, called The Following Story (Het Volgende Verhaal) by Cees Nooteboom (what a wonderful name! I wonder how it is pronounced.) I have a vague memory of coming into possession of this book, and it is dog-eared at p. 76, so I must have started reading it -- I took another go at it Tuesday. And a couple of subtle grammatical errors got me wondering -- is the translator (Ina Rilke) not fluent in English? Or is Nooteboom playing some kind of linguistic game that Rilke is rendering faithfully? For example: the first sentence of the second paragraph of the story begins, "I had waked up with the ridiculous feeling that I might be dead..." "Waked" can be baby talk in the usage "I waked up" but it does not sound like baby talk here, just like nonsense. I do not know any Dutch so I will put my question forth and hope someone reads this who is familiar with Nooteboom in the original. If you have answers, mail me. By the way, here is a very nice couple of sentences: I'm ashamed to say that after all those years on earth I still do not know the exact makeup of the human eye. Cornea, retina, iris and pupil, which double as flowers and students in crossword puzzles, that much I knew, but the actual substance, that vitreous mass of coagulated jelly or gelatine, has always struck fear into me. Whenever I use the word "jelly," everyone invariably laughs, but all the same Cornwall in King Lear had cried: "Out, vile jelly!" as he put out Gloucester's eyes, and that is precisely what I had in mind when I squeezed those sightless spheres which either were or were not my eyes. A lovely passage -- but note "those" in the first sentence. Seems to me like it should be "these". Again -- is this from the original or from the translator? (Note -- very cool that the crossword puzzle joke works in both Dutch and English. I am assuming it worked without too much fiddling about on Rilke's part; if I am wrong and she did have to take liberties to get it to work, well, she did a very good job of it.)We visited Ellen's friend Alice the other day and gave her son Steven Demian as a Hanukkah present. Ellen had asked what I thought would be a good book for him -- he is studying German and is reading Camus -- so I thought Demian was a good idea. It is the first book I ever read in German, anyway the first one I was ever able to actually finish. We gave him my copy, plus a translation. I had a look at the beginning of it and found it fascinating as ever, and indeed highly legible. But here's what's interesting -- the German sounds great and a bit profound to my ears -- but when I try rendering it in English it seems a lot less profound, nearly banal. I don't think this is because I am a lousy translator, though I am; when I looked at the translation which we bought for Steven, its phrasing was pretty close to my own. So could the profundity which I am seeing in the original be something I am reading into it, inspired by the rush of being able to understand a foreign language? -- this is a pretty unusual experience for me. A number of people whom I respect have dismissed Hesse as not worthwhile for someone who is not a teenager. (Which either way, Steven is, so I'm covered there.) Any thoughts? Update: LanguageHat advises me that I am mistaken here: "waked" is a standard past participle of "wake", used more commonly in Britain than in the U.S. And he thinks "those" is acceptable in the longer exerpt. I'd still be interested to know more about the original text that was translated as "after all those years".
posted morning of December 25th, 2003: Respond
➳ More posts about Demian
|  |
Friday, December 12th, 2003
I finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay last night -- by the time I got about halfway through I was utterly enthralled. I am sending it along to my dad (a comix collector) to read.
posted morning of December 12th, 2003: Respond
➳ More posts about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
| |
Wednesday, December third, 2003
More Kavalier and Clay -- it is very absorbing and just about perfect for reading on the train. A review I read of it stated correctly that despite its substantial bulk, it seems to fly past.
posted evening of December third, 2003: Respond
➳ More posts about Michael Chabon
| |
Tuesday, December second, 2003
This morning I started reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, which I found in the train station. It seems so far (60 pp. in) like a fun and amusing read, not touched by genius but the work of an attentive craftsman.
posted morning of December second, 2003: Respond
| |
Thursday, November 20th, 2003
Turns out to be The Evolution Man by Roy Lewis; Lewis is not French but English; and the first edition does indeed have "The Minotaur" on the cover. Thanks to Google and Prehistoric Fiction for their invaluable help. (See this post for context.) Oh and, I was misled by memory -- the novel is not set in neolithic age but earlier, in the transition from holocene to pleistocene. It was originally titled, What we did to Father.
posted afternoon of November 20th, 2003: Respond
➳ More posts about The Evolution Man
| |
Monday, November 17th, 2003
I finished The English Passengers tonight -- what a dark book it is! I was moved to think about the meaning of the word "earnest" this afternoon, when I said to myself that this book was not (pejorative sneer) earnest in the way that The Life of Pi and The Corrections were -- this thought floated through my head complete with the sneer despite the fact that I had greatly enjoyed both those books, especially the latter -- what did I mean? Kneale does not make such a point of evincing sympathy for his characters as does Franzen -- and indeed, few of the portrayals are sympathetic -- I would say the only ones that are, were Tim Renshaw, Captain Kewley and Peevay, and all with a great deal of ambiguity. So the sympathetic characterizations which I found so compelling in The Corrections -- and which were present in The Life of Pi as well -- are not a feature here. This is probably what I meant to get at with my pejorative use of the word "earnest"; the word is not very well used then, as Kneale is certainly earnest in his scorn for his characters.
posted evening of November 17th, 2003: Respond
➳ More posts about The English Passengers
| Previous posts about Readings
Archives  | |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
