Tag Archives: Translation
Desire, above all else
[Is someone making a list of cover art that do great disservice to the book’s content? If so, could you please add this horrendous cover for Eros? We’ve got rudimentary vector images of a man standing on the neck of a very disinterested woman, while ‘splosionz happen beyond them and a fleet of fighter jets […]
Mostly unmoved / unmoving
Have been rather ambivalent about updating this blog, as I’ve been largely unmoved in what paltry reading I’ve done this March. In the past couple of weeks, there has been a limping parade of books-that-thought-they-could. I argue that I read them because they were the only ones that called to me, albeit feebly—in a, “Hey, […]
01092013: Bye, Franzen; and Proust, still
Franzen, I’ve found, shies away from an indulgent narrative about families—about his family, here in particular. Snidely, I think: His essays need to have reach—they shouldn’t only be about the Franzens. And so: Family dynamics should naturally draw on Snoopy and its creator. An awkward adolescence—too enlightening, really: who knew Franzen was such a big dorkus?—dignified by an examination of the youth group he belonged to. Selling the house his mother had spent nearly a lifetime to build—a house full, no doubt, of his mother’s disappoints—should lead to a dissection of real estate in America. And, goddammit, troubles with his wife should veer into bird-watching in them good ol’ United States. [Continue reading.]
01062013: With Proust and Franzen
Currently reading: The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen; and Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by Lydia Davis. • I’ve had a rather triumphant week: I’ve been (*holds breath*) blogging regularly—mostly driven by chants of “It’s the principle of the thing, Sasha!”—plus the very thought of the rest of 2013 continues to inspire in me a hope that it’ll get better, reading-wise. (Life insists that it will look up as well, but I’ve heard that before.) [Continue reading.]
01022013: With Proust and Flynn
I began reading both books right before the year ended—on top of promises to myself that I’d finally wrap up Rowan Moore [architecture] and Richard Dawkins [science]. Those promises fulfilled, I then leapt to Hornby [nerdiness], mostly because I couldn’t help it. Proust and Flynn—the latter I bought on the 31st because I was afraid I’d get bored during an lonesome late lunch—moldered in my overnight bag until I went back home in the new year.
Rest assured, I duly chastised myself: You are doing your shoulders no amount of good, Sasha. You can at least read something and make the pain worth it, please. We all have ways of motivating ourselves; my terrible posture happens to be among the most effective. [Continue reading.]
Necessary continuations?
Since I put this book down—this sequel to one of the most accommodatingly sappy surprises of my reading life—I’ve been wondering about its necessity. That is: Did Every Seventh Wave have to exist? Setting aside the little green goblin that suspects authors of cashing in on their successes [after all, why the hell not?], I’ve wondered if it’s good for the narrative—for this story shared by Leo and Emmi—to move forward from that open-ended conclusion of the first book, to risk belaboring their tale. And toward a more conventional ending that just reeks of crowd-pleasing happiness? Was it necessary for the author to return to this story? [Continue reading.]
Hello, sorrow
Cécile , make no mistake, is a little brat. But I liked her. I could tolerate her. Because what saves this novel from Cécile’s push-and-pull of admissible naïveté and plain cruelty is the self-awareness of the adult-Cécile that narrates this story. We’re not talking to seventeen-year-old Cécile here—we’re being told about her by a decidedly more sane version of her. We can share in that Cécile’s careful remorse, her frustration with herself, her younger self, and her shenanigans. It’s the gift of hindsight, one that’s never abused as to coerce us into un-subtle meditations on the follies of youth. And it’s this hindsight that, somehow, lets us forgive Cécile her faults—it’s what lets one deal with the seventeen-year-old running amok the French Riviera; after all, who among us haven’t been this stupidly full of ourselves—or wished we were, then. And, perhaps, even now. [Continue reading.]
“From your window, can you see the moon?”
One of the first NYRB Classics I heard of—in tandem with John Williams’ Stoner—was Eileen Chang’s collection of novellas Love in a Fallen City. My bibliophilic enabler Aunt Anne sent me this book late last year, and it’s taken me this long to settle down and read it. And, you know, it was awesome. For […]
Dispatches from the diving bell
165 of 2011 ∎ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby; translated from the French by Jeremy Leggatt. “I have known gentler awakenings,” Bauby shares—telling of the day he awoke from a coma, an ophthalmologist stitching shut his right eye. And him inside a diving bell: a massive stroke resulted in […]
