Hard to Pronounce Literary Names Redux: the Definitive Edition

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August 26, 2006 | 3 books mentioned 38 3 min read

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Thanks to some friendly advice from LanguageHat, and seeing competing pronunciations flying around in the comments of the previous pronunciation post, especially for that pesky Goethe, I decided to go to the library and to do a little more Internet research to try to get some definitive pronunciations for these names, specifically printed references where available.

At the library I took a look at Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature (EoL) – pronunciations aside, a very cool reference book – which was very helpful in giving me pronunciations for most of the names on our list. The problem is that the pronunciations are given using symbols that are not easily expressed in HTML, and thus are impossible to convey on this blog. Another problem is that the book was published in 1995, and thus leaves out some of the contemporary authors on this list.

However, with some further digging online, I was able to find some sources, including Merriam-Webster Online (M-W), which uses simplified, Internet friendly notation. You can refer to the M-W pronunciation guide for help if you need it. I also looked at the online version of the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition (AH), whose pronunciations I’ve only linked to rather than copied because it uses images to convey pronunciation symbols, and I can’t easily replicate them here on the blog. Best of all, these two sources include audio pronunciations, as well. Very helpful. Finally I also looked at Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names (PD), some names from which somebody has posted here.

When none of those sufficed I used references from newspaper and magazine articles, hoping that their writers did the research and found out the correct pronunciations, ideally from the authors themselves.

  • J.M. Coetzee – kut-‘see, -‘see-uh (audio via M-W)
  • Paul Theroux – both PD and EoL have it as thuh-ROO
  • Henry David Thoreau – thaw-‘roh (audio via M-W, via AH). The “Pronouncing Thoreau” sidebar on this NPR story goes into some further detail.
  • John Le Carre – luh-ka-ray (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Dan Chaon – I’m going to stick with my friend Edan’s pronunciation – “Shawn” – since she had him as a teacher.
  • Pulitzer – ‘PULL it sir’ (see #19 in the Pulitzer FAQ, audio via M-W and via AH, which also offers the “PEW” pronunciation as an alternative.)
  • Donald Barthelme – There seems to be some disagreement on this one. AH has it with a “th” sound – see pronunciation and audio – while the EoL has it with a hard “t” sound. Not sure which is right.
  • Michael Chabon – “Pronounced, as he says, ‘Shea as in Stadium, Bon as in Jovi,'” according to this profile, though other news sources pronounce the last syllable ranging from “bun” to “bawn” to “bin“
  • Thomas Pynchon – ‘pin-chuhn (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Rainer Maria Rilke – ‘ry-nur Maria ‘ril-kuh, -kee (audio via M-W, via AH. AH does not offer the “long e” at the end as an alternative pronunciation, nor does EoL.)
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Unfortunately not much of a definitive answer here. M-W prefers saying it with more of an “r” sound ‘ge(r)-tuh (audio), but offers ‘g[oe]-tuh as an alternative. AH prefers the latter, note the the subtly different audio. EoL has both of those but it calls the “r” sound “Anglicized.” It also has a “long a” sound in the first syllable listed as Anglicized.
  • Ngugi wa Thiong’o – His first name is pronounced “Googy,” according to UC Irvine, where he teaches, while his last name is presumably pronounced phonetically.
  • Eoin Colfer – The Seattle PI and Guardian both say the first name is pronounced “Owen.” The last name is phonetic.
  • Seamus Heaney – ‘shay-mus ‘hee-nee (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Jorge Luis Borges – ‘bor-“hays (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Vladimir Nabokov – nuh-‘bo-kuff (audio via M-W, via AH. Both AH and EoL offer alternative pronunciations with a stress on the first syllable.)
  • P.G. Wodehouse – ‘wud-“haus (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Chuck Palahniuk – Lots of sources, including USA Today, say “Paula-nik.”
  • Michel Houellebecq – LA Weekly and many other sources say “Wellbeck.”
  • Jeffrey Eugenides – “yu-GIN-e-dees” according to the Houston Chronicle.
  • Jack Kerouac – ‘ker-uh-“wak (audio via M-W, via AH)
  • Colm Toibin – most sources, like the SF Chron have it as “toe-bean,” but the Boston Globe says “Column to-BEAN.”

Bonus Links:

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

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Lists

A Summer Reading List for Wretched Assholes Who Prefer to Wallow in Someone Else’s Misery

Lists
June 24, 2016 | 3 books mentioned 15 4 min read

By some secret law of lists, “summer reads” often settle on books that are light and fluffy and happy. Like a marshmallow, they are usually too sticky and sweet for my taste. What about a list for us wretched assholes who prefer to spend the summer wallowing in a someone’s else’s misery?

On holiday, I cut myself off from my regular writing regime to focus on the people I’m with — I understand this is called “relaxing.” As my real life is relatively drama free, this means I have dangerous spare capacity to obsess over…what? While a happy book might distract me temporarily, it’s far easier to become completely consumed by an epic novel full of anguish.

Over the years, I have a developed specific criteria for the books that I want to read over the summer:
–The novel must have a high page count, a minimum of 500 but preferably cresting at 800. This is crucial, because I want to have something that I can sink into for a good number of days in a row.

–I’ll want to read in 75- to 100-page chunks at a time, because this is precisely how long I need to hide from other human beings on any given day.

–I have to be dying to get back to the story. The urgency must be genuine — this helps make my pleas for reading time feel authentically desperate.

–And most importantly, the plot should involve hardship, anxiety, and a certain level of suffering; these hold my occasional bouts of existential dread at bay.
So, like a marshmallow caught on fire, please enjoy the burnt crust of my epic summer reads:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

This book is a complete kick in the ass. It’s beautiful, big, and full of empathy. Every single one of your 21 senses will be plunged into the social chaos of India in the mid-1970s. From slums and squalor come friendships, and, in comparison, how could you dare feel intolerant of your own family?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Jason Diamond recently tweeted the last paragraph from a 1992 profile on Donna Tartt. “Look at these goldfinches…Goldfinches are the greatest little birds, because they build their nests in the spring, a long time after all the other birds do. They’re the last to settle down…” If you haven’t read The Goldfinch, please understand that in this quote Tartt gives a pitch-perfect plot synopsis of the nearly 800-page novel she would go on to write some 21 years later. This is an author who deserves your undivided attention. If you worry that small birds sound twee, rest assured the section of this book that takes place in Las Vegas will sort you out.

Fall on Your Knees by Anne-Marie McDonald

It was sometime in 1997 that I started to figure out how the world might work. I credit this book with helping me grow up that much faster. It’s devastating and terrible, and funny, a wicked combination.

Adam McKay: If you are listening, before writing the script for the Theranos film could you read this book first? I ask for the dose of empathy that can make an ambitious character feel real:
Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they’ve been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller’s eyes. I stop and stare but can’t stay because men always think I’m selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn’t look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

The only problem with categorizing Yanagihara’s novel as a summer read is that it is hard to read and, on occasion, you might have to take a break. If you do, don’t carry the book around with you! Your cousin will see the cover and feel confused and ask what it is about. And if you tell him, he will then ask, “Why would you read something like that?” Don’t answer. Head back to the hammock and keep reading. You’re on holiday, after all.

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, recently gave Barack Obama a copy of Boyden’s first novel, Three Day Road. It’s set in WWI and in the wilds of Northern Ontario and is a great book, but his more recent The Orenda is the book that earns a place on this list. A decent page count, murders, torture plagues, a cut off pinky, and you are good to go.

A House For Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

Some people say this isn’t Naipaul’s best novel and they are wrong. This is Naipaul’s best novel. It follows the path of a man to middle age as he searches for autonomy — a house to call his own. This resonates, especially when on holiday. If you wrote as beautifully as Naipaul, you could buy your own house. Or cottage? Or rent a hotel room on the other coast…

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

If this list sticks in any way, your summer read is Barkskins. Enjoy the burn.

Image Credit: Flickr/Ray Bodden.

Lists
| 3 books mentioned 15 4 min read
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38 comments:

  1. Hate to be pedantic ( well, actually, I don't) but it's Houellebecq. It's because of that e that it's pronounced well…, otherwise it would be hool…

  2. After all that trouble, I'm felled by a lousy spelling error… Thanks for pointing it out. I've fixed it.

  3. How about Dai Sijie? First name's pretty obvious, but I can't figure out the last.

  7. hi. i'm a bit embarrassed to ask this coz i'm not as intellectual as all the other bloggers posting comments on your page but my friend and i have been debating on how to properly pronounce the name Johann if given for a guy's name. one says it with a yo-han and the other says it with a jo-han. which is the correct one?

  8. I wouldn't bet on Anonymous ever coming back to see this reply after two months, but Johann in German is pronounced "yo-han."

  10. One of my thesis advisors at UCLA once told me as a child Donald Barthelme spent the night at his house. He couldn't remember the circumstances or tell me how his father had known DB, but he did remember that his name was definitely pronounced "BAR-tuhl-mee" with a hard T. This particular professor is not hard of memory, well under the age of 50, and exercises regularly.

  11. I remember embarrassing myself once when I pronounced Albert Camus (Kam-oo) as Albert Kam-ah-s, infront of a group of philosophy buffs. Oh how my face turned red when I found out…

  12. Does anyone know how to pronounce Paule Marshall's name? She was born Valenza Pauline Burke. I'm not sure if Paule is short for Pauline and should be Paul-lay, simply Paul. Any ideas?

  14. Did the late Americanized intellectual historian George Mosse pronounce his name MOSS or the Germanic MOSS-UH? (And the first name?)

    I went to a slightly snobby undergrad university and although most people gave Walter Benjamin's name an English first name pronunciation but did the vaguely Germanic Ben-yuh-meen for the last. I am returning to grad school and wondering what the current thing is?

    Tom [email protected] (let me know at that address also if you don't mind — I tend to forget where I post things)

  15. Anyone know how to pronounce Des Esseintes, the name of the main character in 'Against Nature' or 'Against the Grain' by Huysmans?

  16. I don't know the Huysmans work but a standard French pronunciation would be close to dez-es-sent or des-es-sant. There are exceptions but usually you do pronounce the S before a vowel (unlike the way we say Des Moines, Iowa.)
    Now, how do you pronounce Huysman?

    By the way, I finally asked (by e-mail) the chairman of the history department where Mosse last worked before his death and he said Mosse used an Americanized "Mossy".amkunstwerk

  17. I may be repeating others, but here are my contributions:

    Huysmans is apparently "H'WEES'maan." At least I somehow feel comfortable saying it that way.

    Cioran is TCHAW-rahn (according to the Times obit), but I will never feel comfortable pronouncing his name.

    Walser is Valser, and I pronounce his book "Jakob von Gunten" as "YAH-cub von GOO-tin" — please correct me in the comments if I'm wrong because this is my favorite novel!

    I picked up "Ben-ya-MEAN" as an underground but still use the "W" in "Walter."

    I always pronounce Bataille "Buh-TIE" and Blanchot "BLAN-show," hopefully correctly.

    I hear Musil is M'EEOO-zil.

    I've heard "ZAY-bald" for W.G.Sebald (from people who know German). Presumably I don't have to pronounce the "W" and "G" in anything other than my annoying Philly ACK-sent.

  20. If we don’t mind diving into genre, China Mieville might be a good addition to the list? Wikipedia has a pronunciation in IPA, but I’m not sure what its source was.

  21. Pingback: Library News and Literary Links « Nicole, Worcester
  23. Pingback: Things Like Other Things « Odd Lots
  24. Pingback: put the well in houellebecq « a sisyphean task

  26. I am so glad someone else wants to know how to pronounce China Mieville’s name. That was my first thought when I saw the headline. I even speak french, but those sounds don’t want to come out right for me!

  28. Pingback: How Do You Pronounce That Writer’s Name? « BIG OTHER

  29. Borges has no long-A sound. It’s Bor’ hess – with a short e as in let. The long vowels of English have no counterparts in Spanish except long e which corresponds roughly to the Spanish i as in lindo – leen’ doh. So, Quesadilla is not Kay sah dee yah, it’s keh sah dee’ yah – impress your latino friends.

  31. Anonymous:
    It is ok to pronounce Albert Camus’ last name as “Kah-mahs”, or “Ca-moose”.
    Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant and I will slap them down in any knowledge or IQ test in existence.
    They are mediocre pieces of rubbish who try to bolster themselves culturally by learning the original pronounciation of a few words or names, but have no more knowledge than that.
    People who correct you on Camus’ last name will generally be cultural backwater. Try it out. Be a prick and mispronounce his name in front of an a-hole on purpose and if he corrects you, say something like: “Ah, you must be someone of learning and refinement, someone who must also know about art history, literature, the humanities and the sciences. Let’s talk about them now since I want to learn and you seem to imply by such a refined correction that you are knowledgeable. I cannot wait to be enlightened”.
    Or, say something similar but less of a mouthful.
    People who correct Camus’ pronounciation also eat with chopsticks but don’t know of the conventions of the Japanese woodcuts that influenced Van Gogh.
    Just ignorant rubbish. Sad, really.
    Sorry, but it really irritates me to hear of mediocre ignorant people hanging onto one correct pronounciation as if it makes them cultured. Useless.

  33. Pingback: Cherries and Clay » Blog Archive » Michael Chabon Hits Town

  34. Contrary to the version given above (which as how I was pronouncing it before hand) the actual pronunciation of Huysmans is ‘OUS-mans’ with a completely silent H.

    This is according to a friend of mine who is fluent in French.

  35. ok, I am bilingual in French and English, and in English, Huysmans is pronounced something like “weess-MAWSS.” That’s the closest I can get.

  36. Just ran across your query about how to pronounce R. G. Vliet’s name. Since I’m his widow let me reassure you that his mother pronounced it 5 different ways and that hardly anyone gets it right. The name is Dutch, was Van Vliet, so that Van Fleet was the correct pronunciation. Dropping the Van made it difficult to believe, but the voiced F (v) is the accepted Americanized way, hence the one-syllable, long e, Vleet. Most people try to insert a vowel between the V and L or use a French pronunciation or variants thereof–absolutely wrong. Vleet. is your best bet, but you probably know that by now.

  37. Hi Ann,

    Russel was my great uncle and everyone in my family tells me how much we would have gotten along / how I remind them of him. I am the son of John Vliet, who is the son of my estranged grandfather, Ron. If by some chance you get this I would love to email you sometime about his career as a writer / know some other things about him. His writing has always resonated with me in a very odd, spiritual like way, as if him and I have some strange, esoteric sort of characteristics in common somehow. I am also intrigued by your explanation of how to pronounce Vliet- as I have been raised to pronounce it “Vuh-leet,” whereas you are saying the most accurate pronunciation is “Fleet”? Very interested in anything you have to say about any of this as I have long been curious of my Dutch origins, the otherside of my family lineage being Finnish. Cheers!

    Josh

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Essays Lists

The Author Sends Her Regrets: J.K. Rowling and Other Writers with Second Thoughts

Essays Lists
February 18, 2014 | 3 books mentioned 4 8 min read
Is a writer allowed to have regrets? Certainly. Is she allowed to air them publicly? I mean, yeah, it’s a free internet, why not? Do I want to hear a single additional word about the world of Harry Potter from J. K. Rowling that is not in the form of another book? No, not particularly.
Essays Lists
| 3 books mentioned 4 8 min read
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Essays Notable Articles

Shutting the Drawer: What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell?

Essays Notable Articles
August 23, 2011 | 3 books mentioned 73 4 min read
The truth is, my novel isn't selling, and it probably won't. There, I've said it. Eventually, a writer must accept rejection, accept the death of her first true darling, and move on. Can I face that sobering reality? Can I put my first book into the drawer, and shut it?
Essays Notable Articles
| 3 books mentioned 73 4 min read
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Notable Articles Quick Hits

Confined By Pages: The Joy of Unread Books

Notable Articles Quick Hits
May 6, 2010 | 3 books mentioned 50 5 min read

An unread book is all possible stories. It contains all possible characters, styles, genres, turns of phrase, metaphors, speech patterns, and profound life-changing revelations. An unread book exists only in the primordial soup of your imagination, and there it can evolve into any story you like. An unread book – any unread book – could change your life.

Like most readers, I love browsing in bookshops and libraries. I like to run my fingers along the spines and read titles and authors’ names. I pull the books out and flip through them, thinking about the stories inside them, the things I would learn from them, how my life would be subtly but surely different after I had read them. Sometimes I buy or borrow the books and read them. As much as I enjoy the books, I often find that the book I have read is somehow not as exciting as the book I had imagined reading. No book is ever quite as good as it potentially could have been.

Last week I bought a book. I looked at the blurb and read the first paragraph, and I could feel the texture of the book in my mind. It was going to be a steadily-paced yet exciting coming-of-age story about three young girls who go camping in the woods, stumble across a couple holidaying in a cabin, and see things through the windows that upend their world. It would move from the girls in their clumsy tent, to their fable-like journey through the forest, to the glowing windows of the cabin. The story was going to be overflowing with the smell of mulching leaves, the stale sweetness of fizzy drinks on the tongue, the crackle of empty sweet wrappers. It was going to be honest and real and uncomfortably sensual. Except that it wasn’t about that at all: it was a thriller about a woman having an affair. With every sentence I read, the book I had imagined shrank smaller and smaller. By the end of the third page, it had disappeared. The actual book was by no means bad, it just wasn’t the book I thought it would be.[1]

I have about 800 unread books on my shelves. Some would find this excessive, and they would probably be right. But I take comfort in knowing that I will have appropriate reading material whatever my mood, that I will be spoiled for choice whenever I want a book, and that I will never, ever run out of new stories.[2] From the cover design, the back blurb, and general absorption of cultural knowledge, I have a strong idea of what each one of my unread books is like.

For example, I think that Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy is at once claustrophobic and expansive. It has the texture of solid green leaves crunched between your molars. It tastes of sweetened tea and stale bread and dust. When I read it, I will feel close to my father because it is his favorite book. Reading the Gormenghast books will allow me to understand my father in ways I currently do not, and at certain points in the book I will put it down and stare into the middle distance and say “Oh. Now my childhood makes sense.”

Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness will make me sad and proud and indignant. I will no longer get tangled up in discussions about gender issues, because I will finally have clear-cut and undeniable examples of how gender stereotyping is bad for everyone. Reading it will make me feel like an integral part of queer history and culture, and afterwards I will feel mysteriously connected to all my fellow LGBT people. Perhaps I will even have gaydar.

Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 is an obsessive and world-shifting epic. When I read it, I will be completely absorbed by it. It will be all I think about. It will affect my daily life in ways I can’t fully understand, and when I finish it I will have come to profound revelations about the nature of existence. I will finally understand all the literary theory I wrote essays on when I was at university.

I have not read these books because I worry that they’re not the books I think they are. Perhaps I will never read them. I’m sure they are wonderful books, but no book could possibly contain all the knowledge and understanding I am expecting from these. I know it’s unrealistic, but I still hope.

There is another reason to leave books unread: because I know I will love them. This might seem nonsensical, and I suppose it is. I am a writer, and I learn how to write by reading; I know that certain books will teach me more than others because they are similar in style and content to my own writing, though vastly better. This is why I have not read Fucking Daphne, an anthology of sex writing about and edited by Daphne Gottlieb; or Alice Greenaway’s White Ghost Girls, a short and lyrical novel about sisters in 1960s Hong Kong; or Francesca Lia Block’s fantastical erotica novellas, Ecstasia and Primavera; or anything ever written by Martin Millar[3].

I know that I will love them and want to learn from them, and so I don’t read them: firstly because it is tiring to read that way, with your eyes and ears and brain constantly absorbing; and secondly because once I read them they will be over, the mystery will be revealed. Sometimes I hold these books in my hands and imagine what I will learn from them. These books have affected my writing, and I haven’t even read them. Maybe we can learn as much from our expectations of a story as we can from the actual words on the page.

Go to your bookshelves and pick a book you have not read. Hold it in your hands. Look at the cover and read the description on the back. Think about what the story might be about, what themes and motifs might be in it, what it might say about the world you inhabit, whether it can make you imagine an entirely different world. I suggest that the literary universe you just created might be more exciting and enlightening than the one contained within those covers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that book. It might prove to be a great book; the best book you have ever read. But your imagination contains every possible story, every possible understanding, and any book can only be one tiny portion of that potential world.

Back | 1. I prefer my version, and still harbor a hope that my imagined story is out there. If you’ve read it, let me know.

Back | 2. In my defense, I spent six years as a bookseller and am now the reviews editor for a magazine, so I accumulated a lot of paperbacks. Plus, I can’t go past a second-hand bookshop without finding something that I must have.

Back | 3. This is also why I have never reread my favorite books: Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss, Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse, or Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls. They’re just too good.

[Image credit: Kenny Louie]

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