'The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra' by Pedro Mairal (Review)

It's always good to see more publishers bringing out fiction in translation, and a recent addition to the fold is New Vessel Press.  They announced a starting half-dozen from around the world, and first up is a slim book from Argentina - although it's a work which certainly belies its size...

*****
Pedro Mairal's The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra (translated by Nick Caistor, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a book worthy of being New Vessel's first release.  The narrator of the story is not the titular Juan Salvatierra but his younger son, a man who lives in Buenos Aires working as an estate agent.  One of the reasons for his move was to escape from his father - or, to be more precise, from the gigantic canvas painting Salvatierra senior spent his life creating.

"I was supposed to be going away to study, but above all I wanted to escape from Barrancales, from home, and most of all from the painting, from the vortex of the painting that I felt was going to swallow me up forever, like an altar boy destined to end up as chaplain in that huge temple of images and endless duties with the canvases, pullies, colors..."
p.80 (New Vessel Press, 2012)

Years after his father's death though, our friend, together with his elder brother, Luis, decides that the unique artwork deserves to be brought out and shown to the world.  The brothers return to their hometown (and their deserted home) to find the painting and sell it to an art gallery overseas.  It's a unique creation, a tapestry-like picture which flows like a river, and there are sixty rolls piled up, one for each year of the artist's painting life...

...except that there should be sixty-one...

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra doesn't run to much more than a hundred pages, but it's a beautiful, well-written story.  The narrator initially just hopes to settle some outstanding family affairs, but in searching for the missing roll, he finds much more than he bargained for.  As well as discovering some interesting, unsettling and surprising facts about his father (and remembering the way the painting defined their relationship), he also starts to find out a little more about himself.

In fact, his search for the missing piece of the painting leads to a complete reevaluation of his life.  He decides to shut his office and return to his home town, cycling along old paths and walking by the river, the border between Uruguay and Argentina (which has its own role to play in the story...).  In effect, he is revisiting the past, adrift in a town full of strangers, where the train station is abandoned and overgrown, and his father's friends are long gone (or senile).

While his return allows him to see the town once more, it also helps him to learn more about his father, who is quite the enigmatic figure.  Juan Salvatierra was left mute by a childhood accident, and this led him indirectly to his artistic destiny.  An autodidact, his entire life was spent on one astonishing (lengthy) work.  However, when it comes to life outside painting, his son discovers that there was a lot more to his father than he ever realised...

The star of the show though is the painting itself - life captured and reflected on canvas.  It gives the son a sense of a blurred reality, and when he comes back to town, he starts to think he's in the painting:

"I looked at all this, asking myself so many questions at once.  What was this interlacing of lives, people, animals, days, nights, catastrophes?  What did it all mean?  What could my father's life have been like?  Why did he feel the need to take on such a huge task?" (p.35)

One thing's for sure, Salvatierra truly wanted to create life's rich tapestry.  However, it's one which also contains many of the answers to his son's questions...

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra is a beautiful, understated novella, a story which calmly unfolds in front of the reader's eyes.  It consists of short chapters full of elegant prose and measured recounts, but there are also plenty of little pieces of information which only later slot into their rightful place.  Nick Caistor's translation is partly responsible for the feel of the story, making the book smooth and a pleasure to read.  It would best be read slowly, allowing time for the story to develop at its own pace.  Alas, I fear that most readers (like myself) will devour the book in a sitting or two ;)

One book it reminded me of a little, both in its measured pace and its subject matter, is one of Peirene Press' class of 2013, Richard Weihe's Sea of Ink.  Both use the literary form to describe an artist and his art and both use short, concise chapters to great effect.  And, like Juan Salvatierra, Bada Shanren was a man of few words (in his case, by choice though!).

What Mairal has produced with this book is a painting like a story, in a story like a painting, and I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to see read it :)  It's a book I can heartily recommend, and one which I hope to reread at some point.  As I said at the start of the post, it's good to have new players in the translated fiction game - especially when they can produce books like this one.  More please :)

Tony at the Melbourne Writers Festival (Prelude)

It's not often that I get up at 6.20 (and even less often that I do so with a spring in my step), but that was the case today as I headed off to the big bad city to attend the Melbourne Writers Festival - for the first time ever!

The early start was so that I could get myself a parking space at the station, saving my wife the hassle of dropping me off before the school run, but it did mean that I arrived at Federation Square, the scene of the festival, at about the same time the cleaners rolled up to make the place tidy for the day...  Still, it gave me a chance to catch up on some reading :)

I had pre-ordered tickets for two events, leaving myself ample time to relax in between.  The first, at 10.00, was with Laurent Binet, the French author of HHhH, and while I wasn't completely convinced by his book when I read it earlier this year, I was interested in hearing him discuss the book and the background (and justify his choice of style!).

My real goal was attending my second chosen event, Andrés Neuman discussing his great novel Traveller of the Century, and I was also hoping to catch up with him for a quick chat after the event.  Did I manage it?  You'll have to wait and see ;)

Predictably, though, the long wait (and the inclement Melbourne weather...) brought a change to my plans.  While I was twiddling my thumbs at 11.30, wondering what to do with myself for three hours, I noticed a line of people waiting outside one of the studios, so I asked a helper what was on.  It turned out that it was an Edinburgh World Writers' Conference session on the future of the novel, featuring (among others) Teju Cole - and it was due to start at 11.45...

...so after a mad scramble out of the centre to find the tiny box office down by the main road and purchase a ticket, I arrived back at the room, sweaty and panting, but ready for another session.

Which is why I'm going to leave you now - I need some sleep!  But Tony, I hear you cry (I have *excellent* hearing), were the sessions any good?  Well, that's a tale for another day; for now, you can just look at some pretty photos instead :)

'Conversation in the Cathedral' by Mario Vargas Llosa (Review)

It would be a slight understatement to say that The Feast of the Goat has been the least successful book of my Spanish-language literature adventure so far.  However, I'm nothing if not fair, so I decided that I needed to give Mario Vargas Llosa a second try, a chance to make amends - and I even gambled on one of his longer works this time around.  Let's see if it was a risk worth taking...

*****
Conversation in the Cathedral (translated by Gregory Rabassa) has absolutely nothing to do with big churches.  The cathedral of the title is a seedy bar, where two of the main characters, Santiago and Ambrosio, go to catch up after a chance meeting.  The two men have a shared history, but they are very different people - as will become evident over the next six-hundred pages.

Santiago is the son of a rich socialite family, but he has chosen the black-sheep path and works as a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, turning his back on his family and their wealth.  Ambrosio is a hulking black worker, formerly the chauffeur to Santiago's father, Don Fermín, and he has fallen on hard times.  As the two talk about what has happened in the years since they last met, the reader is treated to a spell-binding trip thorugh Peruvian history and introduced to a whole host of characters, both fictional and real.  It's a challenging book, and the two drinkers aren't the only ones with a headache by the time we get to the last page...

Where The Feast of the Goat left me cold, Conversation in the Cathedral had me coming back for more every night.  It's a novel which is far more interesting, stylistically more inventive, and much more intricate.  The first chapter detailing the events of the meeting and the conversation is fairly normal, but from chapter two the book bursts into life.  Conversations erupt without warning, several at once, intermingled, confusing:

"To work, son," Ambrosio says.  I mean, to look for work."
"Are you serious or joking?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Did my old man know you were there?" Santiago asks.
"I don't like to joke, " Bermúdez said.  "I always speak seriously."
p.46 (Harper Perennial, 2005)

By the way - Ambrosio is talking to Santiago, and the Lieutenant is talking to Bermúdez...

It gets even more complicated later when multiple conversations are taking place (from different times), and some of the speakers are present in two or three of them.  You really need to be on your toes at times in this book...  Which is not to say that it's all mind-bending.  The narrative flows nicely, and the conversations usually hit the right balance between mundane and witty:

"Why were you so bitter, then?"  Ambrosio asks.  "Was it because of the girl?"
"I never saw her alone," Santiago says.  "I wasn't bitter; a little worm in my stomach sometimes, nothing else."
"You wanted to make love to her and you couldn't with the other one there," Ambrosio says.  "I know what it's like to be close to the woman you love and not be able to do anything."
"Did that happen to you with Amalia?" Santiago asks.
"I saw a movie about it once," Ambrosio says.  (p.92)

Of course, there's more to that short exchange than meets the eye...

The book is divided into four parts, and each looks at a different period of time (even if the chapters tend to jump backwards and forwards in time).  Each introduces new characters, many of whom then fade into the background.  After 100 pages, we are obsessed with Santiago's university time and his communist leanings, eager to learn more about his friends Aída and Jacobo - by the end of the book, they've been forgotten (like mnay good university friends...).

One of the main characters is Cayo Bermúdez, a non-descript, half-breed merchant plucked from obscurity, who becomes one of the most powerful and feared men in the country in the 1950s.  Having eclipsed the General who recommended him to the President, he goes about consolidating the regime's grip on power while amassing a fortune, keeping a mistress and ruthlessly crushing all attempts at insurrection.  Oh, and did I mention that Ambrosio is his chauffeur too?

In fact, while the book begins with Santiago, it is actually Ambrosio who is the star attraction.  His connection with the rich, famous and morally questionable allows the reader to taste what life was like in Peru in the 1950s, a story fascinating enough to keep the reader's attention.  And when the pace does flag a little (inevitable in such a long book), and the reader is beginning to wonder what else might happen, Vargas Llosa throws in a murder, one he has already hinted at.  Suddenly, events take a new turn, and some surprising revelations make us see certain characters in a new light...

Conversation in the Cathedral is an excellent novel, and one which has (mostly) restored Vargas Llosa in my eyes.  Like The Feast of the Goat, it's a book concerned with history and politics, but it does so in a much more elegant and interesting manner.  Rabassa's translation is excellently unnoticeable (if you think that's a good thing!), allowing the reader to immerse themself in the story without stumbling across clumsy expressions.  While I don't think the writer manages to hold the tension right up to the end (I thought it was just that little bit too long towards the finish), he still does a good job of making the reader want to prolong their stay in the semi-fictional world he creates.

So Vargas Llosa has managed to redeem himself, and my Spanish-Literature odyssey is back on track - although it's actually nearing its end.  In fact, I have just one more of my library treats to get through before I can sit back and relax.  Which is probably a good job - I have a pile of ARCs that could really do with some attention...

'Lonely Hearts Killer' by Tomoyuki Hoshino (Review)

After the previous success of Tomoyuki Hoshino's short-story collection, We, the Children of Cats (from PM Press), I was eager to try another of the writer's books.  Today's choice is a novel, which makes a nice contrast, allowing me to see which genre suits him better.  So, how does Hoshino fare in the longer form?

*****
Lonely Hearts Killer (translated by Adrienne Carey Hurley, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a novel which could almost be called dystopian in a detached, literary way.  After the death of the young Emperor (called Majesty throughout the novel), the 'Island Nation' nosedives into a communal depression, with many people unable to even get out of bed.  While many of those 'spirited away' had no strong feelings about the royal family, it seems that the event has acted as a catalyst, causing people all over the country to collapse under the stress of their everyday lives.

Although Shoji Inoue, a young unemployed filmmaker, wasn't affected by the event, he becomes fascinated by the reasons behind the nationwide downward spiral.  He gets to know one of the 'spirited away', his friend's partner, Miko, and becomes obsessed with his thoughts on the phenomenon.  It's a phase which may simply have passed away into history, if only Inoue hadn't made sure that nobody would be moving on with their lives in a hurry...

Lonely Hearts Killer is told in three parts and voices.  In the first,we learn about the death of his young Majesty, and the aftermath of the traumatic event, through Shoji's eyes.  In the middle section, his friend Iroha continues the story, trying to come to terms with Shoji and Miko's deaths and the chaotic situation Japan finds itself in as a result.  Finally, Mokuren, Iroha's friend, finishes off the story after Iroha does something foolish.  Both Iroha and Mokuren comment on the actions and thoughts of the previous part; in his introduction, Hoshino invites the reader to speculate in turn about Mokuren...

It's a frightening story, but one which is eminently believable.  A depressing event triggers mass depression and soul-searching in a country which is already in the grip of a downward spiral.  With an ageing population and a depressed economy, there is little hope for the future - and in a society where suicide is not as stigmatised as it is in Christian countries, death is always an enticing option.  Even the weather joins in, cherry blossoms blasted off the trees by giant dust storms  (perhaps symbolic of Hoshino's rejection of 'typical' J-lit conventions), and the reader is treated to the eery sight of Tokyo as a ghost town, with the streets emptied of people.

In deciding to take their lives, Inoue and Miko spark a revolution.  Death suddenly seems preferable to hanging around in a grey country waiting to die - and if you're going to go, why not take someone else with you?  Suddenly, everyone needs to be careful out on the streets:

"People were overreacting if someone just brushed up against their shoulder or arm on the train.  They would shove or even brandish a weapon at whoever had inadvertently done the touching, and the number of such cases resulting in bloody brawls had increased.  And sometimes simply walking in the same direction as another person even in a residential neighborhood would end in trouble.  The upshot of all this was a widespread aversion to other people and rampant paranoid hostility in crowded places."
p.128 (PM press, 2009)

All of a sudden, it seems that nowhere is safe, and no-one can be trusted.

A major theme involves films, with Shoji and Iroha obsessed with reproducing what they see on camera, putting layer upon layer, copy upon copy until the original is distorted, unrecognisable (an irony in a country where the traditional idea of reproduction has virtually come to a halt).  Shoji's existence has, fairly literally, been a life on film, a fact which doesn't always please him:

"Accompanying the growth of my catalogue of filmed images are occasional moments when I feel very sad at the thought that the substance of my worth, what matters about me is contained in the volume of a disc." (p.13)

Iroha is also obsessed with filming wherever she goes, and it is her film of Miko, films of films, an endless hall of digital mirrors, which causes the initial cracks in Shoji's facade.
And what are the 'love suicides' plaguing the country if not a series of copies...

Of course, this copy-cat culture is a distorted one, and the people need a strong leader to stand up and tell them to get on with their lives and stop worrying about death.  Initially, however, the royal successor (Her Majesty) is unable to do so.  In a worrying power vacuum, the gap is then filled by a politician - one who has shown himself to be a bit of an opportunist and, perhaps, morally suspect.  Just like real life then...

What's it all about?  Good question :)  It's certainly, in part at least, a stand against ultra-nationalism (something which is always a concern in Japan - I remember the men in black vans with loudspeakers distinctly...).  It's also a reflection (no pun intended) of a real sense of depression in Japan.  The Land of the Rising Sun has been eclipsed by close-to-zero economic growth and a rapidly ageing population.  In the book, few children are being born - the 'one child' policy which is introduced is meant to *stimulate* the birth rate, not control it!  The novel also highlights the danger of group-think, showing that there are risks in marginalising minorities in a culture of nationalistic homogenisation.  Then again, it might be about something else entirely :)

Once you've finished the novel (as in We, the Children of Cats), there are some added extras.  There's a great Q & A between the author and the translator, and a translator's introduction which provides background information about the novel.  This contains some useful analysis of the book (which certainly makes it easier to write a convincing review!).  Now, if only more publishers could find the time to do this...

Lonely Hearts Killer is a fascinating story with a good translation, and it's a book that is well worth checking out.  It's not always easy to get your head around what Hoshino is trying to say, but it's certainly a welcome change to some of the cherry-blossom-tinted (or blood-soaked) J-Lit around at the moment.  Do try it :)

'70% Acrylic 30% Wool' by Viola Di Grado (Review)

Today's post is on another gem from Europa Editions that I missed out on the first time around, but it's a book that was well worth waiting for.  The writing is strange, and subtly disorientating, but the setting is very, very familiar...

*****
Viola Di Grado's 70% Acrylic 30% Wool (translated by Michael Reynolds, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a wonderfully bizarre novel, one set in the English city of Leeds.  From the very start, the city plays a starring role in the story, mostly as a dark, depressing place, a town where it's always December and daylight is just a distant cultural memory.

Of course, we're not meant to take this literally (I think...) - this view of the city is an outward projection of the mental state of the main character, Camelia Mega.  Born in Italy and brought to Leeds at the age of seven, she is struggling to cope with the loss of her father (caught in flagrante with a lover - in a car crash) and her mother's retreat into an inner-world, one of denial and wordlessness.

Camelia seems set to follow her mother down the spiral when a chance encounter on the street with a young Chinese man, Wen, provides the impetus she needs to start living again.  In fact, Leeds even manages to get past December (eventually...).  A love story with a happy ending then?  You obviously don't know Viola Di Grado...

70% Acrylic 30% Wool is a fantastic book, a novel which defies simple clichéd explanations.  It gets its power from Di Grado's manipulation of language and the way in which she makes the ordinary bizarre, constantly leaving the reader grasping at thin air.  For me, this was a more personal reading than for most because I lived in Leeds for a few years, very close to the places Camelia describes; however, the Leeds of the novel is less that of my student years and more one of some post-apocalyptic nightmare.  As any self-respecting southerner will tell you, it's grim up north:

"It must have been seven in the morning but it was dark outside, like at any self-respecting hour of the day in Leeds.  They discriminate against daylight hours here, ghettoizing them behind curtains."
p.19 (Europa Editions, 2013)

I don't think the city's tourist board will be hiring Di Grado as an ambassador any time soon...

Things start to get better though, when Camelia meets Wen, the manager of a clothes shop, and starts taking private Chinese lessons (let's ignore the fact that they met after he recognised her clothes as something he'd thrown out in the rubbish...).  Camelia had been planning to study Chinese at university before her father's death, and she soon gets swept up both with her studies, and her growing passion for the young teacher.  However, when Wen (no pun intended) fails to respond adequately to her advances, things start to get very messy.  Occasionally literally.

As you might imagine from the mixed linguistic background of the story, languages and words (or the absence thereof) play a major role in the novel.  Camelia becomes obsessed with Chinese characters, painting them on pieces of paper, plastering them across the walls of her home and tracing them manically onto her arms and legs while watching television.  Everything she sees is decoded in the form of the radicals of the characters, transformed from real objects into inky-black depictions.

Her journey into language contrasts with her mother's retreat into silence (the silence, at times, threatening to infect Camelia, forcing her to vomit up words...).  Having said that, languages do not necessarily require verbalisation, and mother and daughter somehow communicate very well with glances.  And, of course, there's always music:

"She stood up there, so red at the top of the steep narrow stairs, stairs rotten with dust, like an upside-down Tower of Babel that instead of multiplying languages had destroyed them all.  And all this, the elision of all languages, just to get to this moment, to her standing there mute and breathtaking as she always was after playing her favorite piece." (p.157)

Camelia, though, most definitely prefers words - and action...

I still don't think I've managed to quite get the idea of the novel across adequately - this book is ever so slightly twisted (in a good way, of course).  As well as the above, there'll be blood, sex, betrayal, mutilation of defenceless clothes and flowers, and symbolic references to holes.  And Leeds.  Lots of walking about the centre and student areas of Leeds.

Which brings me to the only bad thing I have to say about 70% Acrylic 30% Wool...  Michael Reynold's translation is a good one, a very good one in fact, but it's written in American English, and for me that detracted from the finished article a little.  I was just too close to the setting of the book to be able to gloss over some of the vocabulary choices, even if the style of the language isn't noticeably American.  The place I used to go and buy crisps at late at night is not a 'gas station'; the thing I used to walk on to uni most days (OK, some days) is not a 'sidewalk'; wherever Camelia found the clothes, I'm pretty certain it wasn't a 'dumpster'; oh, and while Leeds can be pretty bleak at times, it's definitely not 'gray'...

Rant over :)  This is a great book, and I really hope that more of Wunderkind Di Grado's work is available in English soon (my Italian ain't all it could be).  It's not always easy to get your head around, and understanding Camelia's actions can be a nightmare at times, but you should definitely take 70% Acrylic 30% Wool for a spin.  Definitely not one for delicates though ;)

'Heaven and Hell' by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Review)

Last year, as some of you may remember, I was on a bit of an Icelandic kick and managed to read several great books from the small island nation.  One I didn't get around to though was a book by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, a novel which several bloggers had raved about.  With the sequel, The Sorrow of Angels, out now, I thought it might be time to correct this oversight - and luckily, the good people at MacLehose let me have a copy of both :)

*****
Heaven and Hell (translated by Philip Roughton) is the first in Stefánsson's trilogy about a character known only as the Boy.  We begin with preparations for fishing for cod in the cold sea off the north Icelandic coast, in a team of six with his friend, Bá­­ður (a literary type who seems out of place in such a functional setting).  We're in the mid-nineteenth century, but it could really be back in the seventeenth century; life seems very basic - and harsh...

After a night of waiting and preparing, the fishing crews set off into the unwelcoming waters, and disaster (inevitably) strikes.  Sickened by the attitude of the other fishermen in the face of tragedy, the Boy sets off on a perilous journey back to a distant village, not caring if he survives the journey or not.  There he finds that in a land that doesn't appreciate outsiders, he's not quite as alone as he thinks...

Heaven and Hell is a great story with superb writing.  The first part of the book is dominated by the struggle between the fishermen and the sea.  The waters are a living entity: cruel, cold, deadly and majestic.  The poor sailors in their tiny 'sixereen' are at the mercy of something far greater than themselves, trusting their fate to 'an open coffin on the Polar Sea'.  Just returning to shore can be considered an achievement:

"And those on shore do not passively watch the boats land but instead lend a hand, there is a law beyond man-made laws because here it is a matter of life and death, and most choose the former."
p.75 (MacLehose Press, 2011)

For those who enjoy descriptions of man versus wild, this is the real thing, and the writer creates a poetic description of the battle for life.

On land, things are little better.  Near the shore, the village lies under almost perpetual snow, and the atmosphere amongst its inhabitants can be just as cold and forbidding.  There is a fixed hierarchy, where the owners of the big stores have entrapped the little people in their eternal debt, and the poor villagers live on a diet of credit, subservience, gossip and infidelity.  Outsiders are regarded with suspicion, and anyone a little different tends to drift into a certain circle, one centred upon the enigmatic Geirþúður.  Which is where the Boy comes in...

Stefánsson has a striking style, reminiscent at times of Saramago (a saga Saramago?).  His writing can be jerky, confronting and involved, with frequent rhetorical questions and addresses to the reader:

"A tidy man, that Pétur, like his brother, Guðmundur, skipper of the other boat, about ten metres between their huts but the brothers don't speak to each other, haven't done so in a good decade, no-one seems to know why." (p.16)

Another feature of the writing is superb imagery.  Stefánsson has a great eye for detail, and the reader is sucked into the pictures he creates, be they in the midst of a storm or in the snug of the local pub:

"This was in the evening, a dense cloud of cigar smoke in the room, they could barely see each other, or at least until one of them came up with the idea of opening the window onto the autumn and the sky coughed when the smoke was sucked out." (pp.118/9)

The narrator of the story occasionally switches eyes, following other characters away from what we have come to see as the 'centre' of the story.  When it leaves the Boy and accompanies another of the villagers or fishermen, it appears like a disembodied spirit (which, if we believe the narrative's frame, is exactly what it is...).

Heaven and Hell reminds me at times of a couple of the books I read last year.  In parts, particularly in its description of the hardship of life in Iceland, it is reminiscent of Halldór Laxness' Independent People.  The first section, with the focus on the importance of fishing is more akin though to a Faroese novel, Heðin Brú's The Old Man and his Sons.  Like many of the Icelandic books I've read, particularly those set in the past, it also emphasises the importance of books, stories... and coffee!  However, while coffee can cure all ills, literature is seen as the cause of disaster - poetry can be dangerous...

"Some poems take us to places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness.  Some poems change the day, the night, your life.  Some poems make you forget, forget the sadness, the hopelessness, you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you're dead." (p.85)

Please take care when reading...

Heaven and Hell is a great book, but it's hard to discuss the novel without giving it all away as very little actually happens over the course of the two-hundred pages.  Unlike many books, this one really feels like the first part of a trilogy, a set up of more to come.  Which is not a bad thing at all - I, for one, will be diving into The Sorrow of Angels very soon...

...just as soon as I've sorted out some thicker thermals ;)

'In Translation' by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (eds.) (Review)

Over the past couple of years, as regular readers may have noticed, I've become much more deeply involved in the translated-fiction side of life in the literary blogosphere, and my ratio of books originally written in languages other than English has sky-rocketed.  I've also found myself reading more in German, and for a while now I've been contemplating an alternate universe, one in which money and free time magically appear, allowing me to go off and study again, this time in the field of literary translation.  It's unlikely (sigh) to ever happen, but if I get many more books like today's offering, my arm might just be twisted...

*****
Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky, two noted American literary translators, have put together a wonderful book on the art and science of their metier, In Translation (published by Columbia University Press, review copy courtesy of Australian supplier Footprint Books***).  It consists of eighteen essays by leading translators and writers, each giving a small insight into the art of translation and the life of the translator.  The first section is mainly concerned with theory, and the essays here come complete with footnotes and academic jargon; the second part then moves onto practice, with real-life examples from a host of renowned practitioners.

Before we get onto the nitty-gritty though, we gain an insight into the unglamourous, and often thankless, role of the translator.  Peter Cole discusses the ethical dilemmas of the translator, often a choice in the eyes of the public between invisibility and treachery (to the author and to the original text).  Eliot Weinberger suggests an image of the translator as tradesman, not artist (one who really should be better paid!).  While David Bellos muses over the concept of 'foreign-soundingness', Michael Emmerich shows us how translation can be just as much about the visual as the phonological - in Japanese, snow literally (almost) falls down on the page...

If you think these issues sound a little abstract and unimportant, others are a touch more controversial.  Alice Kaplan, in an essay on the trials and tribulations of translating, talks about her battle of wills with authors (and her own translator), also mentioning the time when Nabokov ordered all the copies of a Swedish translation of Pnin to be burnt.  Whoever said the author was dead...

In the final act of the first part, Esther Allen cautions the unwary reader against assuming that translation is a given for any particular book; you see, it's not quite as straight-forward as that:

"...any given act of literary translation is a product of unique political, linguistic, cultural, technological, historical, and human contexts."
p.101 (2013, Columbia University Press)

The reality is that it takes a unique combination of factors, a whole myriad of planets aligning, to get any one particular work published in the English-speaking world.  Quality is only one small factor.

Once we dive into the practical side of things, we also get to hear from, and about, some superstars of world literature.  Maureen Freely discusses the problems of translating Orhan Pamuk, a story of an 'ethnically-cleansed' language, a head-strong writer and an unexpected venture into Turkish politics.  Cuban poet José Manuel Prieto explains the difficulties he had in translating Osip Mandelstam's most famous poems into Spanish, and Haruki Murakami explains how (and why) he took 'his' Gatsby into Japanese (on a side note, it was nice to see these last two in the collection - translated by Esther Allen and Ted Goossen - as a work on translation without any translated pieces seems rather silly...).

Once you've got your head around what you're going to translate, you need to give some thought to who you're actually translating it for.  One of my favourite pieces had Jason Grunebaum pondering this issue in translating a novel from Hindi into English.  Should he be concentrating on American English, or Indian English?  After all, if you're looking for a large potential market...

Laurence Venuti had a slightly different dilemma in wrestling with the issue of anachronism in his translation of 12th-century Italian poetry.  A poet monk criticising the Pope - what voice would work best in English?  Venuti's answer - Slim Shady:

You spoke with forkéd tongue
and deeply I was stung:
it has to lick my sore
to show the plague the door;
because I'm sure my grief
can't find the least relief
without the execution
of your absolution (p.205)

At any rate, it's certainly original...

If you're a polyglot, In Translation provides you with many great opportunities to test your skills.  Whether it's Russian, Polish, Hindi, German or 16th-century French ballad lyrics, there's something of interest in every piece.  My only issue with the collection (ironically) is that for the Englishman in me it's a little narrow, and slightly US-centric.  A piece on the US-UK language divide would have been nice (as would more British contributors...)

Still, it's a wonderfully-absorbing collection, one which has given my nascent ambitions a further push.  For those of you who think Goethe had more than Dan Brown on his mind when coining the phrase Weltliteratur, let's give a big thank you to the people who show us that there's a lot out there that is worth reading :)

Before I finish though, I'll leave you with some final advice from Susan Bernofsky, who discusses the need to let go of the original text, and the importance of both frequent revision of translation and taking the odd semantic risk:

"It takes a certain amount of pluck - not to mention aesthetic sense and the ability to write well in English - to let go of an original long enough to allow oneself to fully imagine the English words that will take its place, but without this no fully realized translation is possible." (p.233)

That sounds like a job for me :) 

*****
***Footprint Books say that this book is available in good Australian bookshops and directly through their website :)

'All Dogs Are Blue' by Rodrigo de Souza Leão

It's been a long time between drinks, but today I've finally got around to reviewing another book from great indie publishers And Other Stories.  It's another of their South American finds, this time from Brazil, and like Down the Rabbit Hole, it's a fairly short read.  It seems even shorter because of its compulsive nature - this is one you race through in a blur...

*****
All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão (translated by Zoë Perry and Stefan Tobler, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a semi-autobiographical tale of time spent inside a mental institute.  An overweight schizophrenic is locked up after trashing his parents' house, and in a confusing stream-of-consciousness monologue, we learn a little about how he's ended up there and a lot about what happens within the asylum's walls.

From the very first paragraph, the reader is shown what to expect from Souza Leão's madness:

"I swallowed a chip yesterday.  I forced myself to talk about the system that surrounds me. There was an electrode on my forehead.  I don't know if I swallowed the electrode with the chip.  The horses were galloping.  Except for the seahorse, who was swimming around in the aquarium."
(And Other Stories, 2013)

Our friend is a little bit paranoid and obsessed by the idea that he swallowed a chip (which may have developed from the cricket he swallowed when he was a child).  There's a lot more to his madness than that though.

After an initial stint in solitary confinement, he wanders around the asylum accompanied by his (imaginary) friends.  Baudelaire is a calm fellow, but (unfortunately) he's not always around.  Rimbaud, on the other hand, can usually be relied upon to provide the writer with some company, even if he is a tad more aggressive than his fellow French poet.  An interesting point here for non-French speakers - Rimbaud is pronounced in English as 'Rambo' ;)

We occasionally get to see the effect of the illness on the speaker's family, especially his mum and dad.  While they seem to want the best for their son, he certainly feels a little betrayed by their decision to have him committed:

"He says I'll get out when I'm better.  I move towards him and kiss him on the face.  Is it the kiss of Judas?  Will I betray my father in my madness?  And what if two men came now and crucified me upside down.  Could the cross bear the weight of this lard-arse?"

However, in rare, lucid, moments, he is able to put his delusions aside and recognise the truth, accepting that there was something very wrong with his life:

"I cried because I was thirty-seven years old and living like a teenager."

One frequent theme of All Dogs are Blue is religion, with several mentions of beliefs, of both Christian and less orthodox varieties.  It's seen as something that keeps the people happy, even if it messes with their heads at times:

"Religion nowadays just fucks with people.  I think they knew there were a lot of alcoholics in here.  Religion isn't just the opium of the people.  But it's what keeps the people happy.  It's a sad thing when a nation needs religion to lean on.  It's worse than a lunatic who's been cured, but who will always need the support of another person to be happy.  Better to be an incurable lunatic."

In view of later events, this is an interesting viewpoint.  You see, when he eventually leaves the institute, he decides to immerse himself in religion - but not as you might expect.  Our lunatic decides that those who think that a bit of religion, football and music make everything alright in the world are the real crazy ones...

All Dogs are Blue, as mentioned in my introduction, is a work you race through, a real one-sitting book.  It's a story which gives you a flavour of Brazil, albeit in small glimpses through the bars on the institute's windows, but it's also a slightly unsettling glimpse into the writer's own problems.  It fits in very well with the rest of And Other Stories' back catalogue - edgy and ever-so-slightly bizarre. 

A nice addition is an introduction by Deborah Levy (the publisher's success story of the last couple of years) in which she explores some of the book's central themes.  She describes Souza Leão's blue dog as a rare breed of the more common black dog of depression, but it is also used as a link back to his 'normal' life, his childhood, before things went wrong.  Sadly, the writer never got to enjoy his success - he took his life the year All Dogs are Blue was published...

July 2013 Wrap-Up

While I may have posted plenty of reviews in July, there was a lot less going on behind the scenes.  You see, I spent half the month tackling a classic of world literature, a monster I've been steeling myself to confront for a long time now (but more of that next month!).  So if the numbers aren't that great, you know why ;) 

*****
Total Books Read: 9
Year-to-Date: 71

New: 9

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 5

From the Library: 1

On the Kindle: 1 (review copy)

Novels: 5
Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 2
Non-Fiction: 1

Non-English Language: 8 (2 German, 2 Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Italian)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (3/3)

*****
Books reviewed in July were:

1) Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara
2) Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño
3) A Handful of Sand by Marinko Koščec
4) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally
5) Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
6) Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy by Bernard Turle
7) animalinside by László Krasznahorkai
8) Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
9) Varamo by César Aira
10) An einem Tag wie diesem (On a Day Like This) by Peter Stamm
11) Professor Borges by Jorge Luis Borges
12) The Name of the Flower by Kuniko Mukoda
13) The Aleph and The Maker by Jorge Luis Borges

Tony's Turkey for July is: Nothing

No turkeys this month - perhaps in August.

Tony's Recommendation for July is:
Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

I have to say that this was a tough decision (again), not because I have a selection of great books to choose from, but rather because nothing really stood out above the rest of the pack.  In terms of writing, I would go with the Krasznahorkai piece, but it's really too short to warrant the award, and while I enjoyed the two by Borges, they weren't my favourites this time around.  I also loved Peter Stamm's novel, but I'm not sure it deserves to be up with my top picks of 2013.  In the end, then, Ndiaye's book of three related novellas was the only real choice in a month of good, but not great, books.

*****
What does August hold in store?  More of the same, I suspect.  I'm still working my way through some intriguing-sounding review copies, and I have a couple of library books to read to finish off my Spanish-language adventure.  Having said that though, it's all overshadowed by my previous review (the first of the new calendar month) - get your climbing boots on...

'Der Zauberberg' ('The Magic Mountain') by Thomas Mann (Review)

Recently, a climber in the Swiss mountains found a rather peculiar document as he was leafing through a book in the library of the hotel he was staying at - a building which, according to a receptionist he talked to, used to be a sanatorium specialising in the care of tuberculosis victims.  The document appears to be a tale of a climber's slow ascent of one of the local peaks, but it is (rather strangely) written as much in the form of a book review as of a true climber's journal.  It is possible that the climber was a little disorientated from the altitude (or sickness?), but the text is immensely confusing at times.  Perhaps it is best if the reader judges for themself...

*****
Day 1:
Today finally saw the start of my attempt to conquer The Magic Mountain, the peak the locals call Der Zauberberg.  It's one I've been wanting to tackle for a long time now, and the conditions seem perfect for the ascent.  I decided to take it easy to begin with; in fact, the first part was by train (the scenery is spectacular!).  I got chatting to a nice young man from Hamburg called Hans Castorp, who is spending a little time here visiting his cousin, and we both agree that the air up here is wonderful, guaranteed to improve your health.  I think this is going to be a great experience :)

Day 2:
The incline is still fairly gentle, which is a good thing - I haven't quite acclimatised to conditions yet.  Yesterday, I talked to a few other visitors in the village, some of whom have been here for a good while longer than I would have thought necessary.  Castorp doesn't appear to be taking to the mountain air - he was looking very pale this morning.  To be honest, I'm feeling a little tired myself - let's stop there and push on tomorrow...

Day 4:
Things are getting tougher as I push on up the mountain.  Today, I made the acquaintance of Settembrini, an Italian literary type, both scholar and philosopher - and a man who likes to speak his (and everyone's) mind.  I sense that if I fail in my endeavour and come tumbling down this mountain, it'll be his face that I see frowning down at me as I fall into the abyss below...

Castorp and Settembrini seem to have become as thick as thieves, and they are constantly having discussions on freedom and progress.  In particular, Castorp seems obsessed with the topic of time; it is said to pass quickly in the sanatorium (where the month is the smallest unit of time), yet the seven minutes waiting for a thermometer to take a reading seems like years (in fact, am I sure it's only been four days since I started off?  It seems like months.).

Settembrini is constantly warning Hans to leave the mountain as soon as possible (at times, I get the distinct impression that the warning is actually intended for me...).

Day 6:
I'm pushing on grimly again towards my planned stop half-way up the mountain; I could definitely do with a rest.  Time is flying by, yet it's also strangely dragging.  Some of Castorp's days, weeks, months pass in seconds, yet some minutes take days...

The going has become harder again as the climb moves from the physical to the metaphysical.  Castorp's obsession is now the human body, fuelled by an equally ardent obsession with the lovely Clawdia Chauchat.  He's spending his time reading and talking about bodies, looking at the aesthetic, spiritual and artistic sides, before descending into an analysis of protein and fat.  An endless biology lesson - Hans, what are you doing to me?!!!

It's high time I took a well-earned rest...

*****
Day 7:
After a relaxing interlude spent preparing for the ordeal ahead, we resume our climb.  Almost a year (a year?) has passed since setting off, yet our return to the lowlands remains a distant promise (do I mean mine or Castorp's?  I'm not really sure anymore...).

Settembrini!  Settembrini!  He's back to torment me, and this time he's brought a friend - Herr Naphta, a sick Jesuit with a love of corrupting philosophy and politics...  If only I could throw the two of them off the mountain, the climb would become much more enjoyable (alas, I fear the thin air is having an effect on me...)

Day 8:
Joachim, Castorp's cousin, has descended the mountain leaving Hans (like me) all alone.  Unlike me, Castorp is fine on his own up here - I'm struggling to keep up...

Day 10:
I'm lost, we're lost - we're all eternally and frighteningly lost...

There have been more metaphysical, metaphorical wanderings through the tortured, twisting discussions of the elegant Settembrini and the scowling Jesuit Naphta, and I'm starting to lose my grip on sanity and ice pick alike.  Why?  Why must they do this to me?  Is it not enough that I'm barely two-thirds of the way up this accursed mountain?  Must I be tormented by soulless imbeciles blathering on about revolution, nature and death?

Of course, there's also the literal, open-air wandering high in the mountains as Castorp and I cast caution to the (biting) wind and explore the local slopes on skis.  And we're lost.  The darkness draws ever closer, the gale is tearing at us like a thousand knives - and the snow continues to fall, unceasing, like fresh earth on a waiting grave...

Oh, and it's *bloody* cold...

Day 13:
What a few days...  A new companion on our ascent, Mynheer Peeperkorn, has certainly livened things up (and even managed to subdue the quarrelling pedagogues).  What a man!  What a character!  What a party!  Wine, Dutch gin and lots of fun...  Time to rest - my head is throbbing a little...

Day 14:
Peeperkorn gone, Clawdia departed - so near to the top and time is dragging (again).  Even Castorp's interminable patience appears to be waning.  Surely I can't fail so close to the summit?

Day 15:
I'm here!  I've made it to the summit!  I'm standing at the top, looking down upon the flatlands below.  Time seems to be standing still - while the ascent seems to have taken a very long time, in some respects it feels as if I only just set off to conquer the peak.  Time really is relative...

What next?  It would be a shame to just start back down now that I've made it all the way up here.  I might just check in at the 'Berghof' for a while (room 34 seems to be vacant).  Not for long, three weeks sounds good...

*****
Regrettably, this is all that remains of the text.  We hope that more light will one day be shone on what could be a remarkable literary find.

Then again, it may all just be a dream...