Hard to Pronounce Literary Names

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August 22, 2006 | 3 books mentioned 94 3 min read

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Update 3: Thanks to some friendly advice, and seeing competing pronunciations flying around in the comments, 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. So here is a new updated post on Hard to Pronounce Literary Names

Ask the Internet any question you want, and usually you’ll be able to learn the answer, but for some reason it’s not very good at helping people find out how to pronounce words and names. I’ve noticed, looking at my visitor logs, that people show up here again and again trying to find how to pronounce a handful of difficult literary names. Sadly they’ve found no answers here… until now. So on to the pronunciations.

  • J.M. Coetzee – the Nobel Laureate’s name is pronounced “cut-ZEE-uh” according to this Slate article and a number of other news items.
  • Paul Theroux – This well-known travel writer’s name “is pronounced ‘Thor-ew,'” says the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, “not like the dude from Walden Pond” (which would be Henry David Thoreau, whose name, according to the “Pronouncing Thoreau” sidebar to this NPR story is frequently mispronounced; it is supposed to sound like “thorough.”)
  • Spy novelist John Le Carre is pronounced “luh KAR-AY” or “luh kahr-AY,” according to this site, which lists pronunciations found in the Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names (who knew that such a book existed?). Incidentally, Le Carre is actually the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell.
  • Contemporary novelist and short story author Dan Chaon is pronounced “Shawn.” So says my friend Edan, who was a student of his at Oberlin.
  • Pulitzer, as in the prize and newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer – Number 19 in the Pulitzer FAQ: “The correct pronunciation is ‘PULL it sir.'”

If anybody else has other ideas for hard to pronounce literary names, leave them in the comments and we’ll add them to the list. Meanwhile, here’s a bonus link. The BBC has launched a pronunciation blog (via LanguageHat).

Update: Some great suggestions are rolling in from the comments. Kyle’s got some classic problem names:

  • Donald Barthelme = “Bartle-may” not “Bar-THELM” as I had originally heard. Michael Silverblatt solved that one for me.
  • Michael Chabon = “SHAY-bun” not “Sha-BON” like my friend has said.
  • Thomas Pynchon = “PIN-chawn” not “PIN-shin” or “PIN-chin” etc. etc.

…and for kicks here are two German oldies that need some respect…

  • Rainer Maria Rilke = “RILL-kuh” not “RILL-kee”
  • and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe = “GOO-tuh” not “GARE-tuh” like we smarmy Americans like to think it is. I have heard it as “GO-thee” and all kinds of botched up ways, but yesterday I asked a German woman who is a Lit. major and she straightened it out. Apparently, here in the states we overemphasize the umlaut to an R when it isn’t as harsh as that. [Bud contends that you don’t “ignore the r sound altogether in Goethe.” In Chicago, there is a Goethe Street in the Old Town neighborhood, which the locals apparently pronounce Go-EE-the, though I could never figure out if they were just pulling my leg. –Max]

Laurie adds Ngugi Wa’Thiong’O, the Kenyan author whose latest book Wizard of the Crow just came out and Eoin Colfer, neither of whose names I know how to pronounce. Any help? She also suggests Seamus Heaney, Nobel laureate, which The Traveller tells us is pronounced SHAY-mus HEE-knee.

Update 2: Some debate about Seamus Heaney in the comments, but this NY Times article seems to confirm it: “SHAY-muss HEE-nee”. Kyle, meanwhile, informs us that Eoin Colfer is pronounced “Owen”. My favorite unpronounceable book title, by the way, is James McCourt’s Mawrdew Czgowchwz, pronounced “Mar-dew Gorgeous”.

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

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The Most Anticipated Books of 2007

Lists Notable Articles
January 2, 2007 | 3 books mentioned 18 8 min read

As I did in 2005 and 2006, I’ve decided to open this year looking ahead to some of the exciting or intriguing titles that we’ll be talking about over the next few months.Possibly the biggest literary arrival of this young year will be that of Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest later this month. Unfortunately for some fans, the book is not the long hoped for sequel to Harlot’s Ghost, a book that Mailer abandoned for this one, according to an interview. With this effort Mailer treads into charged territory, chronicling the early life of Adolf Hitler from the point of view of the devil or something like it. The curious can read an excerpt of the book that appeared in the January issue of Esquire.Also coming right around the corner is House of Meetings by Martin Amis. The book came out in the UK in September where John Banville in The Independent named it a “Book of the Year.” The reviews have been generally good. The Observer called it a “compact tour de force.” The Guardian was slightly more skeptical saying that the book is “an attempt to compress the past 60 years of Russian history into 200 pages, delivered as the monologue of someone whose name we’re never told; an ambitious plan, held together by the sound of a voice.”Also this month, Paul Auster’s latest book Travels in the Scriptorium comes out. It sounds like another inscrutable, postmodern tale from Auster, this time starring a protagonist named Mr. Blank. In this case, Auster’s inward looking tendencies are amplified as the book references many of his previous works. At both Condalmo and Strange Horizons, this particular Auster experiment has been deemed less successful.Louis Begley, author of About Schmidt, has Matters of Honor coming out this month. It starts with three unlikely roommates at Harvard in the 1950s and goes on to trace how the diverging outcomes of their lives came to be. If that sounds like a tired old tale, PW makes the same observation but then brushes it aside: “It’s a story covered by everyone from Cheever to Roth, but Begley finds new and wonderful nuances within it.”Colum McCann’s fourth novel Zoli will hit shelves soon. The book is named for a Roma (or Gypsy) woman in Slovakia who we follow from her harrowing childhood during World War II to her becoming something of local literary celebrity. Through it all, however, she is unable to escape what her heritage signifies in her Communist bloc country. The book has been out for several months in Ireland and the UK where The Guardian hailed McCann’s “near pitch-perfect control of character and narrative.” For those who want a taste, a pdf excerpt from the book is available.Another big name with a new book out this year is Jane Smiley, whose Ten Days in the Hills arrives in February. Hills is being billed as Smiley’s “LA Novel” (note that Jonathan Lethem’s “LA Novel” arrives in March). PW sums it all up rather well: “Smiley delivers a delightful, subtly observant sendup of Tinseltown folly, yet she treats her characters, their concern with compelling surfaces and their perpetual quest to capture reality through artifice, with warmth and seriousness. In their shallowness, she finds a kind of profundity.” On the other hand, I’m not convinced that the world needs another literary look at the Hollywood-caricature side of LA.February will also see the arrival of Daniel Alarcon’s Lost City Radio. This is Alarcon’s first novel, following his collection of stories, War by Candlelight, which was a finalist for the 2006 PEN Hemingway Award. Alarcon likely came to many readers’ attention in 2003, when his story “City of Clowns” was featured in the New Yorker debut fiction issue. This new book scored a blurb from Edward P. Jones – “Mr. Alarcon, like the best storytellers, reveals to us that the world we have secreted in our hearts spins in a bigger universe with other hearts just as good and just as bad as our own.” – always a good sign.Also in February, a new book will arrive from Nuruddin Farah, quite likely the best known Somali novelist and the winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998. Knots is about Cambara, a Somalian woman who has emigrated to Canada, where a crisis sends her on a journey back to Somalia. Farah is known for his strong female protagonists and this book appears to be no exception. Knots gets a glowing review from PW – “Despite its heavy subject, joy suffuses the novel” – and Farah will likely continue to be discussed as a potential Nobel winner.It would be strange to read a book by Jonathan Lethem that wasn’t deeply rooted in his hometown of Brooklyn, but readers will get that chance in March when You Don’t Love Me Yet arrives. The book is set in Los Angeles, but, while Fortress of Solitude had some amusing LA moments set in the office of a Hollywood agent, this new book concerns itself with the city’s grungier east side neighborhoods, home to a star-crossed indie rock band whose members are classic LA misfits. Early accounts at PW and this bookseller’s blog have found the book to be funny and entertaining but not up to par with the author’s earlier efforts.If you’ll indulge me in allowing a little non-fiction to sneak into this post, please note that William T. Vollmann has a new book coming out in March called Poor People, a rather slim tome, weighing in it at just 464 pages. This is the book that Vollmann mentioned when Ed and Scott saw him read back in spring 2005. From Scott’s post: “Vollman is currently working on a book about the experiences of poor people in different countries. He says he asks everyone why they think they are poor, and the answers greatly vary. He says most of the Thais told him it’s because they were bad in a previous life. Most of the Mexicans he spoke to told him it was because the rich stole from them.”A book by Columbian writer Laura Restrepo will hit American shores in March. Delirium was originally written in 2004 and follows the life of a struggling literature professor who must investigate what has caused his wife to go insane. The book bears an impressive array of blurbs befitting a writer of Restrepo’s stature (if not here, then overseas), including raves from Jose Saramago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harold Bloom, and Vikram Seth.We’ll also see a new novel from Kurt Andersen co-founder of the influential magazine Spy and host of the public radio show Studio 360. Heyday is set in the mid-19th century and it follows an immigrant, recently arrived on bustling American shores, who falls in with a group heading west, lured by the California Gold Rush. Random House calls the book “an enthralling, old-fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel of ideas.” A short story about two of the book’s main characters appeared in Metropolis in 2003.Debut novelist Joshua Ferris already has a backer in Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation, who says Then We Came To The End is “a humane and affecting book.” Mark also included the novel in his contribution to the Year in Reading series where he said that this “hilarious and gorgeously written novel might just change [his] mind about MFAs.” Of course, Mark is fully aware that we all might not share his particular tastes, so he convinced publisher Little, Brown to let him publish the book’s first chapter at TEV, where you can now check it out for yourself.Orange Prize winner Lionel Shriver also has a new book coming in March, The Post-Birthday World. PW describes as “impressive if exhausting” this novel that explores what might have been if its children’s book illustrator protagonist had given into temptation and pursued an affair. Following the success of Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and the subsequent re-release of her back catalog, The Post-Birthday World marks her first new effort since hitting the literary big time.The Savage Detectives, originally published in 1998 by the late Roberto Bolano, will arrive in April. The book has already appeared in other languages, which is how Francois of Tabula Rasa came to read it. he shared his reactions with us as a part of the Year in Reading series: “Pure bliss! In turn coming-of-age story, roman noir, literary quest, this is a real tour de force, reminiscent of Julio Cortazar and Jack Kerouac while remaining deeply original. Bolano passed away in 2003. He was fifty years old, and I just can’t help thinking about what else might have been coming from him.” New Directions, meanwhile, will publish a translation of Bolano’s novella Amulet in January.There’s not much available yet on Dani Shapiro’s new book arriving in April. Buzz Girl notes that Black and White is “about mothers and daughters set in New York and Maine.” The book follows Shapiro’s well received 2003 book Family History.The biggest literary month of 2007 might be May which will start with the much anticipated, much delayed publication of Michael Chabon’s new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon’s first full-length adult novel since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a thriller set in an imaginary world inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s short-lived plan during WWII to create a Jewish homeland in Alaska, rather than the Middle East. Sounds interesting, no? We’ve been following this book for quite some time now, as it was originally set to be released nearly a year ago. But Chabon put the brakes on the project when he decided it was moving along too fast.Yet another big name author with a new book out this year is Haruki Murakami, whose book After Dark hits shelves in May. The book was originally published in Japan in 2004, and has already been translated into some other languages, including Dutch. In keeping with the title, the novel tracks a number of nocturnal characters who dwell in Tokyo and have the sorts of encounters that tend to occur in the wee hours of the morning. Murakami’s typical melding of dream and reality will be familiar to readers of this new novel as well. Still, I join Scott Esposito in hoping that Murakami breaks new ground with this new book.Also in May: the arrival of Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. Not much available on this one yet, save a stray synopsis or two. The novel begins with a family on a farm in northern California in the 1970s and moves to the casinos of Nevada, at which point a “traumatic event” breaks the family apart. The pieces are put back together in the novel’s second part, which takes place “in the stark landscape of south-central France.” Like I said, not much to go on just yet.Susanna Moore, best known for her novel In the Cut, has a new book coming out in May. The Big Girls is based on Moore’s experience teaching writing in a federal prison in New York, and one early look at the novel found it to be, as one might expect, fairly disturbing. It’ll be interesting to see other opinions of what sounds like a very emotionally charged book.The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins will arrive in June. Wiggins’ last book, Evidence of Things Unseen, was a National Book Award finalist in 2003. This new book is a historical novel about the Old West photographer Edward Curtis.I’ll close the list with two additional non-fiction books that I’m particularly looking forward to. Pete Dexter has a collection of his old newspaper columns coming out called Paper Trails: True Stories of Confusion, Mindless Violence, and Forbidden Desires, a Surprising Number of Which Are Not About Marriage. A number of the columns are from his time in Philadelphia, which should be of particular interest for me, since the city is now my home. In addition, I’ve always felt that the old school newspaperman’s sensibility that Dexter brings to his fiction is one of his most appealing qualities as a writer, so I’m looking forward to getting the opportunity to delve into the pure stuff, as it were. Another journalist whose new collection is, for me, hotly anticipated is Ryszard Kapuscinski. Kapuscinski is a Polish writer who, to me, is unsurpassed in his chronicling of the so-called Third World and its forgotten wars and struggles. I don’t yet know what his latest, Travels with Herodotus, will cover, but I know I’ll be reading it.While long, this list is by no means exhaustive, so please use the comments to share what you’re looking forward to reading in 2007.

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| 3 books mentioned 18 8 min read
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94 comments:

  1. Barthelme = "Bartle-may" not "Bar-THELM" as I had originally heard. Michael Silverblatt solved that one for me.
    Chabon = "SHAY-bun" not "Sha-BON" like my friend has said.
    Ummm…oh..
    Pynchon = "PIN-chawn" not "PIN-shin" or "PIN-chin" etc. etc.
    …and for kicks here are two German oldies that need some respect…
    Rilke = "RILL-kuh" not "RILL-kee"
    and
    Goethe = "GOO-tuh" not "GARE-tuh" like we smarmy Americans like to think it is. I have heard it as "GO-thee" and all kinds of botched up ways, but yesterday I asked a German woman who is a Lit. major and she straightened it out. Apparently, here in the states we overemphasize the umlaut to an R when it isn't as harsh as that. So I am told. Anyway. Those are a few. If I think of more I will post them.

    Kyle Winkler.

  2. Ngugi Wa'Thiong'O, Kenyan author whose latest book "Wizard of the Crow" just came out this month.

    Seamus Heaney, nobel laureate.

    Eoin Colfer, children's author.

  3. The "G" in W.G. Sebald stands for Georg (no e). I think that's pronounced something like Gayorg (hard Es). What thinks ye, Mr. Max?

    Also, don't think you ignore the r sound altogether in Goethe

  4. I agree on Ngugi Wa'Thiong'o – I am afraid to even say his name out loud.

    Seamus Heaney is pronounced SHAY-mus HEE-knee.

  5. Eoin = "Owen"
    And I have always heard Heaney pronounced
    "HAY-nee" even by many Irish people, when I visited.
    I can't help with the African name, although I will try to find someone who can.
    And that's interesting about that Chicago street name…

    Kyle

  6. This was a fun excuse to Google curious sources such as the BBC Pronunciation Unit blog. More Chicago lore: Buildings in the Carl Sandburg Village condo complex are named for James, Faulkner, Alcott, Cummings and other authors. Tell the cabbie, "Clark and GO-thee."

  7. Bud: I think I'll just stick with "WG" so as not to worry about such things.

    Steve: I always wondered about that Carl Sandburg Village but never knew that the buildings are named after literary greats… Perhaps I can do a little research and put together a post on the place.

  8. I guess I should pitch in a bit as well.

    Isn't Rainer Maria Rilke's first name pronounced oddly as well: RYE-ner, not RAY-ner?

  13. "
    Goethe = "GOO-tuh" not "GARE-tuh" like we smarmy Americans like to think it is. I have heard it as "GO-thee" and all kinds of botched up ways, but yesterday I asked a German woman who is a Lit. major and she straightened it out. Apparently, here in the states we overemphasize the umlaut to an R when it isn't as harsh as that. So I am told. Anyway. Those are a few. If I think of more I will post them."

    This isn't really correct. You don't pronounce it GOO, like sticky stuff, tuh.
    It is a more gutteral sound, but if you need to simplify the pronunciation "GUH-tuh" would be closer than "GOO-tuh"

  14. Vladimir Nabokov: Vla-DEEM-eer Nuh-BOCK-off. Not NAB-uh-kov, like in The Police's "Don't Stand So Close To Me."

  15. Also, P.G. Wodehouse is WOOD-house. It doesn't rhyme with Patrick Swayze's greatest accomplishment, Roadhouse.

  17. how do you say Cervantes? and whats the correct way to say Don Quixote?

    is it Don 'KEE-OH-TEE' or 'QUICKS-OTT'

    theres a word in English, Quixotic, which is pronounced 'QUICKS-OTIC'

  19. I saw Ngugi wa Thiong'o last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival – I'm not much good at phonetic spelling but his name seems to be pronounced un-goo-gee wah thee-ong-go (hard 'g'in Ngugi, and actually a cross between 'in' and 'un' for the first syllable).
    He was a great speaker – terribly articulate in English but a terribly thick accent; I'm quite sure, unfortunately, that I missed some parts of his talk.

  20. don quixote is pronounced: don kee-HO-tay

    maud, i've heard ngugi's pronounced similarly: en-goo-gee wa-thyon-go

  24. OO ELL BEK, but it'll sound like "WEL BEK" to most English speakers because the "OO ELL" is pronounced so quickly.

    (The H is silent, and "ou" in French is like English "oo".)

  25. Michael Critchon–I was told is pronounced CRY ton.

    Great info! Thanks!

    Lynne AKA The Wicked Witch of Publishing

  26. I'm a librarian… the most mispronounced author name I hear is Annie Proulx.

    Proulx, according to my French friends is a very very very old spelling. The "l" and the "x" are both silent. You pronounce it PROO (rhymes with "new".

    Don Quixote in SPANISH is pronounced Don Kee-HOH'-teh. The "Don" rhymes with "Tone." I think the other pronunciations derived from French people mis-pronouncing the name. Americans needn't be too ashamed of how we mispronounce foreign words. Have you heard the BBC reporters say "Nicaragua"? Ha! It's a hoot. They say "Nick-uh-RAG-yoo-ah." It is properly pronounced more like "Nee-ka-ra'-wa."

  28. Don Quixote: above poster (hephaestion) is correct. And yes, quixotic is derived from his name, pronounced quiks-OD-ik, as Spanish already has its own "quijotesco" (kee-ho-TES-ko).

    Cervantes: ser-VAN-tes. ser has soft "r", almost like "sed", van not like the vehicle, like "yawn", and tes as in "test", omitting the last "t".

  30. The guy got Nabokov's first name right, but in interviews he has said the "bok" rhymes with "smoke" and the "ov" rhymes with "of." He also said once the "bok" rhymes with "gawk," which I think is only correct if you're thinking of a British pronunciation of the word (which I think would then rhyme with "smoke" only with more of a curl in it, making the pronunciation more Russian-sounding, if that makes sense).
    I would transcribe it something like–Nuh-bowk-of.

  31. concerning matthew kneale, author of ENGLISH PASSENGERS. Is the correct pronunciation neil oder neilè, which I seem to remember to have picked up somewhere. Thanks

  33. DON QUIXOTE…. In the period in which the story was written the 'X' would have been pronounced like 'SH'. So, actually, you would say "kee-sho-tee". Modern Spanish is where "kee-ho-tee" comes from and "kwiks-ott" is pretty laughable (although it has been used for ages).

  37. Actually, the suggestions are almost right, except that the "ng" in Thiong'o should be a soft "ng" like in "sing". "Ngugi" should be pronounced with just an "n" sound, not an "un", before the "goo gee". If you can't manage that, then start with the "ng" in "sing" and go from there to the hard g sound. Also, my understanding is that in Gikuyu his name would have short vowels where there are ~ marks, such that u would rhyme with "good", etc., but the long-vowel pronounciation is so common in the States I'm sure he's used to it.

  40. I have lived in Old Town in Chicago for 13 years and everyone I know pronounces Goethe as Guer-tuh, which may be the smarmy American way, however I have never heard it botched to the point of Go-EE-the.

  41. I am new, I stumbled upon this site by chance when I was researching the proper pronunciation of various literary names. I am not sure if it has already been noted or not, but I also found a site called http://www.howjsay.com. It is a website that has a collection of over 2,000 English words (including authors, and commonly used phrases). All you do is type in the author name(i.e.; Albert Camus) and the pronunciation is given. (I read that the pronunciation is researched from a collection of various dictionaries, and other sources). I hope this helps.. or at least you find the site interesting. :) thanks.

  42. John Proulx, Jazz Singer & Pianist is always mispronounced. It is pronounced "Proo" Like "Shoe". Some people have called him John Prowl like the "Owl" This is incorrect. Thank you

  44. Bless you!! I love this site. Annie Proulx is one of my favorite authors, but I'm always afraid to say her name out loud. (I have been saying it correctly- thanks to my junior high school French.)

  46. I have been trying to find out how to pronounce robert L Cvornyek’s name and also Elliot Cuff and also Prince Vuyani Ntintili. If any one can help me out thak you. I dont have an e mail of my own but i would appreciate it if some one would call me back at 1-240-603-9284 with the pronounciation of these words please and th ank you.

  48. According to my African Literature professor, whose “The River Between” we just read and knows him personally and speaks Kikuyu/Gikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiang’o is pronounced, “NYOO-gee (hard g) wah TEE-ongo”.

  49. It’s not “GOO-tuh”, and I’m not saying your German lit professor was wrong, I’m saying you misheard some subtleties or you did not correctly phonetically spell it out. Pronouncing the German “oe” or umlaut is very hard for some Americans. There is still an ‘R’ there it just gets kind of swallowed by the preceding noise, we just don’t recognize it, and trying to explain how it’s not GOO is kind of difficult, check out Wikipedia’s entry for Goethe and click the “listen” function to the right of his name.

  51. Answering my own question:
    According to a 1997 interview with Robert Crais in the Baltimore Sun, his name is pronounced like “face.”

  52. How do I pronounce Louis de Bernières? I get Louis = Loo-ey, but the surname?

    I need it for a wedding I’m doing on Saturday – the couple has chosen a reading from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

    Thanks
    Anita

  53. Pingback: How to Pronounce Unpronounceable Author Names – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks

  55. I’d love to kow the correct pronunciation of Don DeLillo’s last name. Is it actually “duh-LIL-lo” as I’ve heard?

  57. Goethe: ‘GOO-tuh’ is completely wrong. Anonymous 25 August 2006 is right. The Germans pronounce him ‘GER-tuh’.

  59. If you live on the Westbank in New Orleans and happen to live on Socrates Street, the pronunciation there is So-Crats. See the wonderful book, “Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children”- these are all street names.

  60. Thanks for this valuable list. To tweak one of the additions: Chabon is actually “SHAY-bon” not “SHAY-bun” (he’s helpfully described it as Shay as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi).

  61. Pingback: Literary Names and How to Pronunce Them - World Literature Forum

  63. Yeah, I can confirm that in Chicago I’ve never once heard Goethe pronounced anything than “Gerta.”

    To the people arguing that “No, it’s GER-tuh” “No, it’s GOO-tuh” – I’m pretty sure it’s neither. The umlaut is a sound that most americans don’t know how to pronounce, so it more like something in between the two. So American though of us to only be able to think of it in American terms.

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

  66. It is frustrating when authors like Paul Theroux mispronounce their own last name… Thor-EW?

    Maybe he should visit French Canada (Quebec) and see how the 99% of the Theroux’s there (some of whom are probably related to him) PROPERLY pronounce it.

    I swear that some authors just like to be difficult.

  67. The pronunciation for the last name Barthelme is exactly how it is spelled .
    Barth-el -me. Nothing fancy as you can see it is my last name and people try to make it sound more glorious than it is .

  68. Merriam Webster lists the pronunciation of Mr. Pynchon’s name as “\ˈpin-chən\.” I’m inclined to trust Merriam rather than themillions.com, barring any further evidence.

  69. I once had an embarrassing experience pronouncing ‘Goethe’ as ‘Go-ETH’ in front of my English class – in my defence I’d never said it out loud before..and it sounded fine in my head! So to avoid this in the future – does anyone know the definitive pronunciation of ‘Chinua Achebe’?

  70. Quick note about Don Quixote. The use of ‘kwicks ote’, though harsh to our ears, was the pronunciation used when the story appeared in England. It’s incorrect in light of Spanish, but for anyone reading the English translation who wants to speak of the text in its initial, serial form, ‘kwicks ote’ is the way to go. A holdover from this is in the word quixotic.

  71. What about Jodi Picoult? I’ve heard “pi-COLT,” and “pee-COO,”
    but I think it’s “pi-COE.”

  72. So now I need to know. How is Mahala pronounced? I found this in my genealogy and thought it was either ‘muh hall uh’ or ‘muh hay la’ but wasn’t quite sure. And is Mahalia Jackson’s name pronounced the same or different?

  74. How do you pronounce John Lescroart’s last name. We work in a public library and we want to pronounce author’s names correctly.

    We really enjoy this site.

  75. I’ve heard that “Mainwaring” (as in the Barbara Pym character) is pronounced “Mannering.”

  78. I’m bilingual, English/German. Goethe is tricky for Americans especially. “Gerta” or “Girtuh” are close, but don’t pronounce the “r” sound! Like in British “posh” English, the word “girl” sounds more like “gull” , but lengthened and very slightly nasalised.

  79. Great discussion! Please forgive a non-author related question, but I’ve seen many Dutch names that begin with ” ‘t “. Anyone have any idea how to pronounce this?

  80. I see the name Alcott at the top of the list. In Concord, Massachusetts, where she lived, Louisa May Alcott’s surname is pronounced AWL-cut, not AL-cot, like the tennis player’s.

  81. The g’s in Borges’ name are phlegm-ish. Just FYI. Not pure “H” sounds. Closer to a Dutch g but not quite so “cough up a hairball” as that. All due respect to Dutch speakers (I’m a huge BLØF fan).

    Fun stuff. I struggle with the names of some of my favorite authors all the time.

  83. English uses the diaeresis mark (the double dot) in words such as naïve to tell you that the vowels do not form a dipthong but are to be pronounced separately. I think it’s the same with Anaïs. My guess is a-NAY-is.
    Mostly the mark is dropped now; e.g. it used to be commonly used for daïs, and Zoë, and so on.

  84. The Chicago street is & always has been pronounced “Go-thee”!
    A few people did say “Go-Ee-Thee”, but they were a rarity.
    What’s totally absurd is the automated voice on buses here says “Gare-ta” with the next stop being Burton, both sound similar.
    The only reason the bus is “Gare-ta”, is that the previous head of the Chicago Transit Authority was of German descent & demanded that pronunciation.
    But no one here says that, just as we pronounce “Buena St.” as “Bew-enn-a”!

  86. C. Max McGee and Michelle Barthelme:

    I would never presume to tell anyone how to pronounce his or her name. However, I will say that Michael Silverblatt doesn’t pronounce it Bartle-may OR Barth-el-may. He pronounces it Barth-el-mee. Check out his interview with Dave Eggers here, minute 7:07. And as he says, Donald Barthelme was his friend and mentor, so he’d probably know:
    http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw050210dave_eggers

  87. Thor-ew for “Thereux”? I know it’s still an Americanized pronunciation, but where are they getting the “o”? Plus, in French names, syllables do not end in consonants. I don’t know if there’s meant to be an accent there, but if there is, in French it would be tay-roo; if not; teh-roo. The Americanized version would be the-roo, (soft th) not tho-roo.

  88. How do you pronounce David Baldacci?
    I’ve heard both Baldachee as well as Baldakee and I don’t which is right.

  89. Where are you getting an “o” sound in Thereux? In French it would be Théreux, which sounds like tay-RUH (where the “uh” sound is like the u in “put.” The Americanized version would be more like thuh- (th sound as in “thistle) ruh (same “u” as in”put” or thuh-ROO. Not tho-roo.

  90. The childrens’ author Rick Riordan. The surname is pronounced Ryer-dan and not Rhee-or-dan as I once thought.

    Great post!

  92. Henry David Theroux. Kinfolk and followers near Walden Pond say THOR-oh. Most Americans say Tha-ROH.

  93. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s name is pronounced NGOO-gee (the NG is the same as it is in anger, and the second part is the same as ghee) WAH Thee-ong-oh (the TH as it is in ‘this’, and the ng is a soft one, as in bang).

    There is no “IN” as suggested by Judson. I should know, I’m Kenyan

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Book List: 10 overseas writers we should be reading

Lists
June 29, 2005 | 3 books mentioned 2 min read

The recently awarded international Man Booker prize (given to Ismail Kadare of Albania) inspired critic John Carey to announce in the Guardian: “If you speak Spanish or French or Italian or German or any of a dozen other languages, and walk into your local bookstore, you will … find what is being imagined in China, what stories are being told in Korea, how the novel is being reinvented in Spain and the Scandinavian countries. But if you live in England you will find no such abundance.” The same is true of the US, so I was happy to see that the Guardian had some experts put together a list of “10 overseas writers we should be reading.” As a supplement to the Guardian’s list, here are some of the books by these authors that appear to be available here in the StatesHarry Mulisch – Netherlands – The Discovery of Heaven, The Assault, Sigfried, The ProcedureStefan Heym – Germany – The Wandering Jew, The King David ReportCees Nooteboom – Netherlands – The Following Story, Roads to Santiago: A Modern-Day Pilgrimage Through Spain, Rituals, All Souls Day, In the Dutch MountainsMarcel Benabou – Morocco – Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun: A Family Epic, Dump This Book While You Still Can!, Why I Have Not Written Any of My BooksHalldor Laxness – Iceland – Under the Glacier, Independent People, Iceland’s Bell, Paradise Reclaimed, World Light, The Fish Can SingJuan Goytisolo – Spain – State of Siege, The Marx Family Saga, Marks of Identity, Juan the Landless, Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya, The Garden of SecretsJaan Kross – Estonia – Professor Martens’ Departure, Czar’s MadmanMarie Darrieussecq – France – Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation, My Phantom Husband, Undercurrents, Breathing UnderwaterShen Congwen – China – Imperfect ParadiseDubravka Ugresic – Croatia – The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays, Lend Me Your Character, Thank You for Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, In the Jaws of LifeLooks like an interesting, eclectic list. I’m intrigued by Ugresic in particular. For more Man Booker International Prize coverage check out the Literary Saloon.

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| 3 books mentioned 2 min read
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Mr. Rochester is a Creep: A List

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August 20, 2010 | 3 books mentioned 59 4 min read

I love the disturb-factor in classic literature.  Once you’re out of the classroom, much fun can be had by viewing an older book with a contemporary gaze–analysis and history be damned.  Pick up Pamela by Samuel Richardson, for instance: the eponymous heroine escapes the sexual advances of her employer, Mr. B., time and time again…only to fall in love with and marry him by the book’s end.  Attempted rape: so hot.  When a girl says no, she really means maybe.  Too bad, though, that Pamela is so dull.  I don’t think  I could stand another go at it, even with all the life lessons therein.

I’m thinking of Pamela these days because I just finished re-reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontё.  Oh the Brontё sisters!  I haven’t yet read Anne’s books, but based on this comic, I think I might like them.  Charlotte and Emily, meanwhile, were deeply weird, and they (or, okay, their protagonists) were into some deeply weird men.  They remind me of that friend–we all have that friend–maybe you are that friend–who consistently falls in love with assholes.  Just dump him already, we think!

And, Mr. Rochester, if he isn’t an asshole, he’s a psychopath–or, simply creepy and duplicitous.  I can’t believe he was voted most romantic literary character in a British poll last year.  That’s messed up.  Are they kinkier in England?  (The Telegraph article on the subject, by the way, mentions that the results were revealed at a literary festival, where “guests were served pink champagne by scantily-clad waiters.”  Oh dear.)

Let’s consider some points against old Edward, shall we?

1. We should just get the big one out of the way.  Dude keeps his first wife locked up. He never lets her out, if he can help it.   “Bitch is crazy!” he cries, but that is no excuse.

2. Not only does Mr. Rochester lock Bertha up, he keeps her a secret from everyone in town–including Jane!  After the truth has come out (at the altar, no less, minutes before he’s about to marry–or “marry”–Jane), Rochester insists that he was planning to tell his new wife the truth after a year and a day of marriage.  Sure you were, Edward, sure you were.

3. Adele, Mr. Rochester’s little French ward, might possibly his daughter, but, you know, her mom slept around, so he’s not entertaining that notion very seriously.  He’ll be her benefactor, sure, but he will never ever be her dad.

4. When Mr. Rochester has the rich guests staying with him at his estate, he goes off to attend to some business or other, and in his absence, a gypsy fortune-teller comes to read the fortunes of the ladies.  Jane goes to see said gypsy in the dark library, and remarks that the woman’s face “is a strange one.  It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks or rather jaws.”  The gypsy talks mostly of Mr. Rochester, and, surprise, surprise, she IS Rochester.  That’s right, Jane’s boss has dressed up in drag, and put on a little minstrel make-up, and asked the house’s governess to kneel before him.  “I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,” she/he says.  Why Jane doesn’t throw up in her mouth a little when she discovers his little game is beyond me.

5. When dressed as a gypsy, Mr. Rochester tells Jane that he’s engaged to be married to one of the women visiting, Blanche Ingram.  Later, after Jane has confessed her love, he admits that his engagement to Miss Ingram was only a ruse to get Jane to react.  He basically says, “I wasn’t really going to marry her!   just wanted you to be jealous, little fairy of mine!”   No matter how much of a pill Miss Ingram is, and she is a pill, this charade just seems cruel.

6. At the end of the book, Rochester is blind and maimed from the fire that ultimately destroyed Thornfield Hall and killed Bertha.  (He does rescue the servants and tries to rescue his wife–I’ll give him that.)   But once Jane has declared that her love for him still remains, he reveals that for the past year, he’s been wearing the pearl necklace (ahem) he had given  her during their engagement.  Some might call this romance, I call it a problem (by morton here).  I wouldn’t be surprised if Rochester likes to wear Jane’s underwear, too.  Or, let’s be honest: Bertha’s.

7. Mr. Rochester is ugly.  Before you start to yell at me, let me say this: I love that the heroine of this novel isn’t good looking.  That’s  interesting, refreshing, and complicated.   But, you know, if a man is ugly, he has to have one hell of a personality. And if he’s going to have a fake history and a secret wife, he needs to be smokin’ hot to get away with it.  (Two words: Don. Draper.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jane Eyre. Its story–part Gothic tale, part romance, part first-person confession–is beguiling.  Its heroine–independent yet innocent, obsessed with stories and weak to the power of them–is complex and believable.   And the prose will have you underlining every other page:
I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.  I abandoned it and framed a  humbler supplication, for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space; “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”
And:
He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and the ax-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end…
Now that I’ve finished the book, I’m ready to finally check out Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which I’m told gives the first Mrs. Rochester the humanity she deserves.  I should also get to The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, for I’m sure they can provide some context for and interpretations of this beloved classic.   I’m curious what Mr. Rochester, and the abiding love readers have for him, means.

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| 3 books mentioned 59 4 min read
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Reading List: World War 2 Nonfiction

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May 24, 2006 | 3 books mentioned 9 3 min read

After yesterday’s World War II fiction post, now it’s time for the non-fiction. Once again culling from the excellent comments left in my original post on the topic from a while back, here are the books:Many readers suggested Anthony Beevor’s books Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945. Writes Steve: “Beevor’s Stalingrad is the better of his two books on the war. Stalingrad was the true turning point in the European war (although you will see many smart folks argue that the turning point was Pearl Harbor, the Russian Front broke the Wehrmacht and Stalingrad, with Kursk following, was the breaking point). The scale of the battle is just amazing. I loved Atkinson’s book, but reading about Stalingrad makes you wonder whether we could have won a battle like that and thankful we did not have to find out.” Tripp writes, “Fall of Berlin 1945 is great, but is also terribly depressing. The end of the catastrophic Russo-German conflict is described in all its brutal horror.” Also fans of the Beevor books were CHatten and S. Dougherty.Tripp also recommends Eric Bergerud’s Touched With Fire: “It concerns the land war in New Guinea and the Solomons. The fighting differed from Europe in a number of ways. For one it is tropical, making the fight somewhat similar to Vietnam. For another the two sides were more closely matched in air and sea power which forced the US to fight differently. It’s an excellent read.” Steve also suggests Russia’s War by Richard Overy, “a very good overview of the Russian Front” and Five Days in London by John Lukacs “about the period immediately following Dunkirk, when any sane nation would have sued for peace and the British decided to fight on alone,” and says that “William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich sets the standard and rightly so. For a thousand page tome it is incredibly readable and never less than fascinating.” Sand Storm also recommends Shirer, but S. Dougherty says “it was poor history by the time it was published.”Another controversial pick is Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose, which Sand Storm liked, but S. Dougherty suggests steering clear. Sand Storm also liked a pair of biographies, Patton by Ladislas Farago and American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur by William Manchester, as well as In Harms Way by Doug Stanton about the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in shark-infested waters. Bryan D. Catherman suggests Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. Don Napoli recommends Serenade to the Big Bird by Bert Stiles who was killed in action during the war. Kate S. likes Paul Fussell’s Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War as well as Uwe Timm’s In My Brother’s Shadow: A Life and Death in the SS, “an extraordinarily powerful memoir that has to do more with the aftermath in Germany than with the war itself.” “For a more personal look at the war,” CRwM recommends Studs Terkel’s The Good War: “I’m a sucker for almost any Terkel book, but this one stands out even that body of excellent works.”CHatten has “a couple of other suggestions on the eastern front, a side of the war which Americans tend to not know much about. Years ago I read a book by a German war correspondent: it’s just called Stalingrad by Heinz Schroter. It’s doubtless out of print and it’s journalism more than history and only from the German side. But still, it’s worth reading. The author was at the battle and the horrific stories and sheer immediacy conveyed by the book gives you a real sense of what it was like to endure this military disaster from the German side. I recently also read Writer at War by Vasily Grossman. Grossman was a Russian writer who worked as a war correspondent; most of the book is excerpts from his journals and reporting. Again, there’s some vivid writing about the unbelievably horrible eastern front, and the entire book gives you a sense of the mixture of idealism and brutality which characterized the Soviet side of that monumental conflict.” Grossman’s newly rereleased novel also appears on our fiction list. S. Dougherty has four suggestions, The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer, “an engrossing memoir written by a German soldier.” “Ian Kershaw’s recent biography of Hitler is excellent — though there are other good ones, his is bifurcated and the second volume deals with the 1936-1945 time period, which fits your bill nicely.” A World at Arms by Gerhard Weinberg is “massive and slow-going, but comprehensive).” Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is about “the banality of evil — a look at the killing squads that moved through Poland in the wake of the fighting.”Really great suggestions everybody. I’ll be bookmarking this post as well. Obviously this list could go on forever, but if you have anything to add, please leave us suggestions in the comments.Update: Lynne Scanlon suggests the first book on the list by a female author. To War with Whitaker by The Countess of Ranfurly is “a diary of an audacious woman who manages to follow her soldier husband to the Middle East. Whitaker is the “faithful servant” who accompanies them. Fascinating. Funny. Fraught.” It was recommended to her by Grumpy Old Bookman.See Also: World War 2 Fiction

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| 3 books mentioned 9 3 min read