Jay Rubin, who spent a year and a half translating the first two books of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, has some interesting things to say about the prolific author.
Murakami’s Translator
Only Sounds
“The most, the best, we can do, we believe (wanting to give evidence of love), is to get out of the way, leave space around whomever or whatever it is.” This excerpt from John Cage’s journals, forthcoming as Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), is as baffling as it is beautiful.
Tuesday New Release Day: Dyer, Aira, Wilson, Iyer
Zona, Geoff Dyer’s book about Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, is out today. Also hitting shelves are César Aira’s Varamo, Adam Wilson’s Flatscreen, and Lars Iyer’s Dogma. We were looking forward to all four of these books to start the year.
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Inspirational Infographic
This week in book-related infographics: “Inspirational Quotes from Literature” by authors ranging from Leo Tolstoy to Ernest Hemingway to J.K. Rowling, all handily grouped by theme.
Abundance and Awe
Recommended reading: Year in Reading alum Leslie Jamison writes about the pleasures and “democratic awe” of Whitman‘s Specimen Days. Pair with our own Michael Bourne‘s “Embracing the Other I Am: or, How Walt Whitman Saved My Life.”
Soder v. Soda
The popularity of Joshua Katz’s American dialect maps inspired The Atlantic to create their own dialect video. In it, Atlantic staff members call people from across the country, recording them so listeners can hear their accents, and ask them to answer questions from a 2003 Harvard survey.
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RIP Harry Crews
Dwight Garner, Maud Newton, and Jason Diamond are among the many to mourn the passing of Harry Crews this past week. “Few writers,” Garner writes of Crews, “could touch his authority and muscle.”