READIN

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

🦋 Reading Dickens aloud

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don't know; all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn, at a dead loss—for as to sherry, my poor dear mother's own sherry was on the market then—and ten years afterwards the caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence half penny short—as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavor without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go "meandering" about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering."

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

-- David Copperfield

posted afternoon of May 16th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, May 15th, 2010

🦋 British books

I wonder how much J.K. Rowling's diction actually resembles Charles Dickens', and how much that is a figment of my imagination inspired by their nationality and by the audio book format. I've been listening to Bleak House on tape for the last few days, and loving it (though to be honest, I don't think I would be digging it as much if I had not read the book already); my previous experience with audio books is mostly overhearing the Harry Potter books that Sylvia listens to from noon to night... but the expressions (and the characters' names) in Bleak House are definitely reminding me of Rowling! To be sure, Robert Whitfield (who is reading Bleak House) has a similar voice to Jim Dale's, and similar affectations -- I wonder if the creaky old-person's voice is a standard element of audiobook-reader training...

Anyway, I got the idea that Sylvia might enjoy reading Dickens. So when we were at the bookstore today, I bought her a copy of David Copperfield, which neither of us has read, which I am hoping she will read and recommend to me... Virginia Woolf called it, in a pull-quote on the back cover, "the most perfect of all the Dickens novels."

posted afternoon of May 15th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, May 14th, 2010

🦋 From the Ashen Land of the Virgin

For the past few weeks I've been reading Raul Galvez' book, From the Ashen Land of the Virgin: conversations with Bioy Casares, Borges, Denevi, Etchecopar, Ocampo, Orozco, Sabato -- this is certainly the proper way to read this book, a bit at a time rather than sitting down and plowing through it; so that one does not become frustrated and throw it down in disgust. There is much about the book that I would characterize as self-indulgent and silly; but there are also interesting, rewarding nuggets among the chaff.

The most enlightening two conversations (and they are for better or worse "conversations", not "interviews") are the first, with Bioy Casares, and the last, with Ernesto Sabato. (I had never heard of Sabato before, but want to learn more about him -- in addition to his novels he was an anarchist and a nuclear physicist, and the director of CONADEP.) I'm also grateful to Galvez for hipping me to the name of Olga Orozco, who sounds like a wonderful poet; and for his conversation with Borges, which while it imparts very little in the way of information, is a charming impressionistic piece about the man's old age.

posted afternoon of May 14th, 2010: Respond

Monday, May 10th, 2010

🦋 Monterroso on Borges on Kafka

In an essay in Perpetual Motion (the second piece down on the linked page), Monterroso talks about first reading Borges and about becoming slowly immersed in his thinking and his puzzles. It is a very nice introduction to Borges; I was surprised to see that the work which opened Monterroso's eyes was Borges' foreword to his translation (1938) of The Metamorphosis:

When I first found Borges, in 1945, I didn't understand him; he was frankly puzzling for me. Delving into Kafka, I found Borges' foreword to The Metamorphosis; and for the first time I saw before me his world of metaphysical labyrinths, of infinities, of eternities, of tragic trivialities, of quotidian relationships comparable to the worst hell imaginable. A new universe, gleaming, ferociously attractive. Crossing from that foreword to all the rest of Borges' work has been for me (and for many others) an activity as important as breathing, and at the same time as dangerous as walking too close to the edge of a chasm. Following him has meant discovering and descending into new circles: Chesterton, Melville, Bloy, Swedenborg, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf; taking up old friendships: Cervantes, Quevedo, Hernández; and at last returning to his illusory Paradise of the everyday: the barrio, the movie-house, the detective story.

Critics complain that in Kafka's three novels, there is a lack of linking material; but they recognize that this material is not essential. Myself, I maintain that this criticism indicates a fundamental unfamiliarity with the work of Kafka. The pathos of these "inconclusive" novels arises precisely from the infinite number of obstacles which block, again and again, the paths of his identical protagonists. Franz Kafka did not finish them: their basic property is that they are interminable. Do you remember the first, the most clear of Zeno's paradoxes? Motion is impossible, because before arriving at B we have to cross the intermediate point C, but before we arrive at C, we have to cross the intermediate point D, but before arriving at D... The Greek did not enumerate all of the points; Franz Kafka need not enumerate all the vicissitudes. It is enough for us to understand that they are infinite, like Hell.

As he closes his piece, Monterroso talks about what your encounter with Borges can do to you:

The great problem of reading Borges: the temptation to imitate him is almost irresistable; to imitate him, impossible. Some writers you can get away with imitating -- Conrad, Greene, Durrel -- not Joyce; not Borges. It will sound facile and obvious. The meeting with Borges never takes place without consequences. I've listed here a few of the things that can happen, for better and for the worse:

1. Pass him by without noticing (for the worse).
2. Pass him by; retrace one's steps and follow him for a little while to see what he's doing (for the better).
3. Pass him by; retrace one's steps and follow him forever (for the worse).
4. Find out that one is a simpleton, that until this moment one has never had an idea worth one's while (for the better).
5. Find out that one is intelligent, because one enjoys reading Borges (for the better).
6. Dazzle oneself with the fable of Achilles and the Tortoise; believe that one has figured it all out (for the worse).
7. Discover the infinite and the eternal (for the better).
8. Mull over the infinite and the eternal (for the better).
9. Believe in the infinite and the eternal (for the worse).
10. Leave off writing (for the better).

posted evening of May 10th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, May 9th, 2010

🦋 The mechanics of translation and blogging

So I'm wondering something about legality or (I guess) just about what's ethical behavior. When I finish my translation of "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" (which is starting to look like more real of a possibility, and maybe will have a rough draft in place sometime this week?) I think I might like to post it in some form at readin -- it is too long for a blog post but maybe a linked page. I'd like to get people interested in reading this story and potentially talking about the sound of the narrator's voice and the crisp solidity of the characterizations. But I don't know how within my rights it is to do that with Bolaño's text, how far have I made it my own text in the process of translating it? (Should probably take a look at Edith Grossman's new book for guidance in this regard.) (And yes, clearly I've already posted a lot of long excerpts here, both direct quotations and my translations -- a whole story of this length and of this recent vintage seems somehow different.)

And on a similar note, a question/reflection about my blogging process. It's generally been that I will post the first or second draft of a translation as I finish it, occasionally even as unfinished fragments -- and sort of make minor revisions in place over time, and major revisions when they occur as a new post. I'm not sure how effective this is in engaging dialogue, which is sort of my dream-readin, hasn't really worked out that way so far but hope springs eternal... Possibly if I waited until I had more of a complete, revised work and posted that, more people would be interested in reading and chatting about it. And following on that, maybe a second level revision process would kick in, take this literary translation stuff to the next level. Let me know what you think, I'd appreciate it.

posted morning of May 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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🦋 The Museum

Slowly, slowly, it developed: the idea of finding real objects, then giving it to the imaginary people, which then would later be exhibited in the museum, then the love story began to develop in my mind. With this novel, I was also collecting objects, say an old lottery ticket; and thinking that I would in fact integrate this, make it a part of my novel.

So some of the novel came from the objects you were finding.

Some of it; and sometimes it would be the other way around, that I would write the novel (as of course stories have their own course), and then I would come -- I needed an object, but I don't have the object, and I would leave, since I didn't want to stop writing, enjoying writing the novel, I would leave it with dot-dot-dot, and look for an appropriate object, or wait for it. I was taking my time...

Embedding is disabled; but go watch the interview at the Guardian site, it's great.

posted morning of May 9th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, May 8th, 2010

🦋 Continuity problem?

Something that is driving me a little batty about "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" (in Putas asesinas) is trying to work out the chronology of Connie's pregnancy. She was impregnated by the Preacher, who then left, and later she was a hooker in New York and met Bittrich and came back to Medellín and started acting in porn movies; but some of the movies are made while she is pregnant, and there's no indication that she has a child when she's in NYC. The only way that would work is if she lived with the Preacher and got pregnant after she had come back from New York and started working for Bittrich; but I thought the narrator said that was not the case. -- No that's wrong, he says "Abandoned by my imbecile father, here's Connie, with Doris and Mónica Farr" -- but that doesn't include anything about the abandonment (or the liaison) preceding the acting career.

A couple of translation things -- I think this uncredited (uncredited? I cannot find the translator's name on it) English translation in the New Yorker does the story some violence by breaking it up into paragraphs and sections. The original story is all one paragraph and it's characterized by a really driving, insistent force of pulling the reader along -- really difficult to put down. I'm trying to do a translation all in one paragraph, don't yet know if I'll be able to communicate that effect in English. Is this a typo? When Connie and Mónica get together with Bittrich,

echaron a rodar los dados por la Séptima Avenida, el artista prusianao y los las putas latinoamericanas. Ya no había nada que hacer. Cuando sueño, en algunas pesadillas, vuelvo a verme reposando en el limbo y entonces oigo, al principio lejano, el golpe de los dados en el pavimento.

* No, not a typo: As Rick points out in comments, "rodar los dados" and "golpe de los dados" both refer to the act of rolling dice.

posted evening of May 8th, 2010: 8 responses
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Sunday, May second, 2010

🦋 Following the references

So Monterroso's essay on flies references José Milla y Vidaurre's essay on flies (this piece turns out to be completely beyond my limited abilities as a translator -- the final two paragraphs depend on the double meaning of mosca, which can be "fly" or "cash"), which references a piece by Lucian In Appreciation of the Fly. (Have I mentioned how happy Google Books, in all its imperfection, makes me?)

...Both Milla and Lucian reference Iliad XVII:487-92, in which Athena blesses Menelaos: in Chapman's translation, "For which grace she kindly did bestow/ Strength on his shoulders, and did fill his knees as liberally/ With swiftness, breathing in his breast the courage of a fly,/ Which loves to bite so, and doth bear man's blood so much good will,/ That still though beaten from a man she flies upon him still;/ With such a courage Pallas filled the black parts near his heart."

posted evening of May second, 2010: Respond
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Friday, April 30th, 2010

🦋 In the beginning was the fly

The rest of the piece I started yesterday -- Monterroso explains some of the role flies play in our universe.

...And think about what I believe Milla said (an author whom of course you will not know but whom thanks to having occupied yourself with the fly, you are hearing mentioned for the first time today), that the fly is not as ugly as it appears at first sight. But this is because, at first sight it does not appear ugly -- precisely because nobody has ever seen a fly for the first time. Nobody ever thinks to wonder, were there flies before me? will there be flies after me? In the beginning was the fly. (It's practically impossible that such a phrase would not appear here -- in the beginning was the fly or some such thing. We live out these phrases. Phrases which --fly--, like sorrow --fly--, mean nothing. Grievous phrases which fill up our books.) Forget it. It's easier for a fly to land on the Pope's nose than for the Pope to land on the nose of a fly. The Pope, or the king or the president (the president of the country of course -- the president of a financial company or a corporation or a maker of product X is in general foolish enough to be considered better than that) is not able to call out his Swiss Guard or his Royal Guard or his Presidential Guard to kill a fly. On the contrary, he is tolerant; perhaps he will just scratch his nose. You know. And you know that the fly knows too, and watches out; you know that what we actually have is a guard of flies, who take care at every hour lest we fall into mortal sin -- which would require a guard of angels, who would soon slack off and turn into accomplices, like the angel in Hitler's guard or the one in Johnson's. But it doesn't have to be that way. Let's return to noses. The fly who lands on yours is a direct descendant of the one who dropped in on Cleopatra's. And once again you fall into these prefabricated rhetorical allusions which everyone has used already. And still you want to create literature. The fly wants you to wrap it in this atmosphere of kings, popes and emperors -- and it wins out. It is your master. You cannot speak of it without an inclination towards grandeur. Oh Melville, you had to sail the seas in order finally to make up this great white whale on your desk in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, without realizing that all the while, since the hot evenings of your childhood when Evil would flutter around your strawberry ice cream and, as the years passed by, over you yourself in the dusk as you pulled out one by one the brown hairs of your beard, reading Cervantes and polishing your style; and not necessarily in that enormous mass of bones and sperm incapable of doing any evil, but rather in him who interrupts your nap, like the crazy Ahab, and Poe and his raven? Ridiculous. Take a look at the fly. Observe. Think.

posted evening of April 30th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010

🦋 To have been a fly on that wall!

Monterroso writes, "There are three topics: love, death, and flies" -- and right away I'm thinking of Robyn Hitchcock... This is the introduction to part II of Monterroso's collection Complete Works (and Other Stories).*

There are three topics: love, death, and flies. Since humanity has existed, this sentiment, this fear, these presences have accompanied him everywhere. Let others deal with the first two; I will occupy myself with flies, which are greater than men (if not than women). For years I've had in mind the idea of putting together a universal anthology of the fly. I still mean to do it -- but, I soon came to realize the task was practically infinite. The fly pervades literature; anywhere you cast your eye, you are sure to find the fly. There is no true author who has not taken the opportunity to dedicate a poem, a page, a paragraph, a line to him; if you are an author and have not done this, I advise you to follow my example, to hurry up and do it. Flies are the Eumenides, the Erinyes; they are chastisers. They are avengers, for what we don't know -- but you know that they have persecuted you; as far as you know, they will go on persecuting you forever. They are vigilant. They are the avatars of something unnameable, something benevolent or malign. They pursue you. They follow you. They watch you. When at last you die, it's likely (and it's too bad) that one fly will suffice to carry your poor, distracted soul who knows where. Flies convey -- and they come over the course of the ages to own their cargo -- the souls of our dead, of our forebears, who thus remain close to us, accompanying us, determined to protect us. They are a means for our small souls' transmigrations; they accumulate wisdom -- they come to know everything that we do not dare to know. Perhaps the ultimate propagator of our tired western culture will be the body of this fly, who has come down through the course of the centuries, furthering his line without enriching himself....

* It appears this piece is actually from a different collection, Perpetual Motion; the two collections were published together in translation under the title of the first.

posted evening of April 29th, 2010: Respond
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