Pevear and Volokhonsky (first names no longer needed, really…like Madonna or Cher) rap with The Wall Street Journal about their luminous (dare we say definitive?) new translation of Tolstoy‘s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.
The Task of the Translators
“на один процент” is “one percent” in Russian
Apropos of yesterday’s round-up of Russian social unrest: the children of Russia’s 1%.
“How like a prison is my cubicle…”
In May, poet David Lehman wrote the first line of a sonnet about cubicle anomie and began crowdsourcing the rest. The completed 12-week project at The American Scholar is not merely a pretty great piece on its own, but a lesson in how to write one, line by line: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8/9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You can submit your title suggestion as late as midnight on Sunday, but we suggest getting a start on it now, while the prison of work is still fresh in mind. (h/t The New York Times)
●
●
Punner Pens Publication
1995 Pun-making champion of the world (and Clinton speechwriter) John Pollack explores the history and meaning of the pun in his new book, The Pun Also Rises, reviewed here.
●
●
2 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Why so Serious?
Jonathan Lethem thinks his work is taken too seriously. “Well, I was just watching Richard Pryor, and he says, ‘When you’re dating a white woman, and people don’t like it, you can’t really pretend. You can’t go, “Oh, she’s not with me.”‘ ‘You write the big, ambitious books, right?’ Well, I guess they are,” he said in an interview with Salon. He also discusses being equated with Jonathan Franzen and his new novel, Dissident Gardens.
●
●
Jane Friedman’s AMA
Last week publishing and web guru Jane Friedman did a Reddit AMA. She fielded questions about self-publishing, breaking into the industry, and her helpful list of resources for writers.
Thanks for this. I didn’t even know a new Pevear/Volokhonsky translation was due. Yay! But check your link for the book. It links to Nabokov’s Origin of Laura. Just a heads up. :)
Oops! Thanks, that’s fixed.