Yawning vs. Not Reading: Americans and Translations a Decade Apart
This morning, the Daily Beast ran a piece by Bill Morris entitled Why Americans Don’t Read Foreign Fiction. It starts with Morris admitting his ignorance of Patrick Modiano’s work prior to his winning the Nobel Prize, then goes into a reading of Modiano’s Suspected Sentences, before veering into the ...
>
Antony Shugaar on William Weaver and Translation in General
Using William Weaver’s passing as a launching point, Italian translator Antony Shugaar wrote a really informative, interesting op-ed on translation issues for Monday’s New York Times. There are a lot of great bits I could quote—like the description of FMR magazine, its espresso and prosciutto orders, the ...
>
This Is Insane [Insanely Cool]
From the New York Times Arts Blog: James Joyce’s fiendishly difficult novel “Finnegans Wake” has been called many things since it first began appearing in portions in 1924, including “the most colossal leg-pull in literature,” “the work of a psychopath,” and “the chief ironic epic of our ...
>
An ALTA So Great it Made the New York Times [ALTA 2012]
Way back at the start of the year, I promised that this year’s ALTA would be “THE GREATEST CONFERENCE IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE OF CONFERENCES.” Now, I’m not sure that was the case—although it was the most interesting ALTA I’ve ever attended—but it was awesome enough to get ...
>
John Locke Paid People to Buy His Books [Last Laughs Laugh Best]
Hardcore Three Percent fans may remember some of my issues and troubles with the hack writer, John Locke (in comparison to the talented philosopher John Locke and the John Locke who featured prominently on Lost), who is the author of hundreds1 of Donovan Creed mystery novels, which feature midgets, pseudo-thriller plot-lines, ...
>
Honorary Powerful Support
Over at the New York Times, there’s a neat interactive feature showing a bunch of Western products and what their names are when transliterated into Chinese. This kind of thing is always a fun diversion . . . Here are my personal favorites: Citibank = Star-spangled banner bank This makes total sense, especially ...
>
Murakami Profile in the NY Times Magazine
This past weekend, in advance of today’s drop date for 1Q84, Sam Anderson wrote a long, very well-textured profile of Murakami entitled The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami. To be honest, I’m not the biggest Murakami fan in the world. I really like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and to a ...
>