“As energy loss is an unavoidable fact of mechanics — no mechanism can be 100% efficient, and the best a designer can do is manage the loss as productively as possible — so translation loss is similarly unavoidable,” explains Mark Davie, who recently translated Galileo’s Selected Writings. But what if the “energy loss” isn’t a failure of the work’s translator so much as a failure of the organization commissioning (or failing to commission) the translation? What if, as is the case for much Arabic literature, “the process [of selecting works for translation] is based on a political consideration” that deprives Western readers of the best Arabic literary work?
Traduttori traditori (“translators traitors”)
“An American train can’t help but dream of the West”
Recommended Reading: this graphic short story by Ben Nadler and Alyssa Berg.
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Show Me (Don’t Tell Me) State
Tired of the writerly hustle and bustle of New York City? Give Kansas City a try: “People stay here, or move here, because they have the cultural and financial freedom to try shit; if it doesn’t work, they try again.”
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The Paris Review Redux
“I hope they also love that experience of surprise and delight and really engaging stories in the fiction sense, but also in the writers at work sense and in the poetic sense.” A Vanity Fair interview with Emily Nemens, The Paris Review’s new editor. And here’s a list of 20 reasons you should absolutely be reading literary magazines.
Noted News Items
Paul Auster is still getting mileage out of a short story that appeared in the New York Times on Christmas day 1990. “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” was subsequently released as a limited edition book illustrated by Brian Cronin. The story became the inspiration for the films Smoke and Blue in the Face. Now, Henry Holt is releasing another edition of the story. This time the book is illustrated by an Argentinean artist named, cryptically, ISOL. Here’s the story if you want to read it.The London Review of Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, the Guardian sits down with LRB editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers.The CS Monitor continues to provide its capsule reviews of the National Book Award nominees. Here are the reviews for the young adult category.
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Turn Left There
Francois Vincent of McSweeney’s has published his hilarious take on asking for directions in short stories. Pair with this list of forty-five of The Millions’s favorite short story collections of all time.
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John Jeremiah Sullivan Reads
John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s NY Times essay “You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” was a big hit last June. Next October, FSG will publish Pulphead, his second collection of essays. To tide you over until then, you can listen to The Paris Review‘s Southern Editor read an excerpt from his Disney piece.
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Plotto
Who, or what, is Plotto? Find out about the art of mechanized storytelling, or what a cardboard robot has to do with melodrama and Law & Order.
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Congratulations friends!
Our friends over at the LARB have received two nods for the Pushcart Prize! Congratulate them by reading through the nominated essays: David Sheilds’s “Life is Short; Art is shorter” and Antoine Wilson’s “Notes on Hack.“
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