“At first, I didn’t realize that AlexanderIII was translating the book; I thought he was just a fastidious Russian reader with a loose command of the English language. It was fun to see people debating the meanings of my thoroughly worked-over phrases…Then I remembered that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights, and realized that AlexanderIII must be translating it for some kind of book-pirating outfit.” Over at The Atlantic, Peter Mountford recounts the experience of watching book piracy in action.
Steal This Curiosity
A Narrative Made Up of Many Narratives
Elizabeth Karp-Evans interviews How to Read a Novelist author John Freeman about editing, American narratives, and his goals for Freeman’s.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hadley, ESPN, Gladstone
New Yorker darling Tessa Hadley has a new novel out this week, The London Train. Also out is the controversial oral history of ESPN, Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, which reportedly offers up ample doses of insider gossip and bad behavior. And finally, there’s The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, in which contemporary journalism is explored in a graphic novel format. Here’s a taste.
The Great Terry Castle
“Much of what passes for advanced literary scholarship these days is dreadful twaddle — incoherent, emotionally empty, deeply illiterate,” says Terry Castle in a recent interview with Salon about her new book of essays, The Professor. You can also catch Castle in the most recent issue of The New York Times Magazine.
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I Grow Old
“If there is one thing more depressing than reading other people’s old letters it is reading one’s own.” Becoming T. S. Eliot.
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Hashtag No Filter
“How are their vacations? Do they inspire envy in a way that’s beguiling, or merely crass? Are they eating in the right places?” In the past year, 30 billion photographs were uploaded to Instagram; 80 million go up every day. On the iPhone as camera lucida.
Related: the pornification of food.
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Mieko Kawakami on the Finality of Being Born
David McNeill profiles author Mieko Kawakami, whose recently translated novel, Breasts and Eggs, has shaken the world of Japanese literature.
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Ben Marcus’s Language
“Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world.” At The Rumpus, Ben Marcus discusses how he uses language in his writing and his new short story collection, Leaving the Sea (featured in our 2014 book preview.) Pair with: Our own Adam Boretz’s interview with Marcus and our review of The Flame Alphabet.
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I’m one of these pirate translators.
Several years ago I’ve translated two novels. The Angel of Pain by Brian Stableford and The Singer’s Crown by Elaine Isaak.
Probably because of the bad karma both publishers were ruined. Somebody from the first one downloaded an edited copy of Angel on the pirate web-sites. I don’t know who. Later I got acquainted with Brian and presented him copy of his Empire of Fear in Russian, pirate edition too. That was all I could do.
What about Singer’s Crown, the translated text is on my hard drive now and I do not know what to do with it. To my regret I didn’t get any answer from Elaine Isaak to my message on Facebook.
Well… things could be worse. Recently I have read a book by Nora Roberts, Naked in Death. It was dull and I could not understand why is it popular among English-speaking readers. Then I noticed a strange thing in the story – multicharged flint pistol. I’ve downloaded English text to check and discovered that there are no flint pistols in the book at all! Only revolvers. I read further and revealed that the translator has changed… well… everything. He erazed all mentions of the future technologies. When the protagonist reads online-news he writes – newspaper. When there are cyber-dogs, he writes just dogs. Revolvers – flint guns, lasers – just guns, videophone – telephone and so on. At the same time he added more emotions. I could not find the man. It seems that he has no blog or page in the Web. I feel pity for Nora Roberts because Russian readers will think that her In Death books are common harlequin novels.