Admit it: you never finished Finnegans Wake, did you?
Unread Classics
Invisible Translators
“One is less likely to overlook or be unfairly harsh to a translator if one has been a translator, and one is less likely to fault an original writer for weaknesses in translated prose or poetry if one has a sense of the pitfalls into which a translator can stumble—a sense I am still developing after years of translating poetry and prose.” Over at Asymptote Journal, Sue Burke and Maia Evrona look at reviews of books in translation.
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The Arcades Project
If you thought Michel Houellebecq was controversial, let me direct your attention to Kenneth Goldsmith. In this piece, the poet that everyone loves to hate asserts his desire “to take Walter Benjamin off the pedestal and on to the coffee table.” His newest, Capital, is out now.
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Cher and Cher Alike
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Lit Pics, Part Deux
On Monday, March 11th, Electric Literature and Lazy Fascist Press celebrated the release of Sam Pink’s novel Rontel. (If you need a refresher, I wrote about Rontel a few weeks ago.)
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Fail Music
Novels written by accomplished writers about failed artists are nothing new. What is new is seeing a once-successful novel about a failed artist — one that’s been out-of-print for twenty years — get a burst of renewed attention.
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California in The New York Times
The Millions‘s own Edan Lepucki, whose first novel California will be released next week, was featured in The New York Times following the promotion of her novel on The Colbert Report. We recommend you read the article, read more from Edan here and here, read the first chapter of California here, and then order the novel ASAP.
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“There is no other planet like Earth, […] so Superfund sites have to be super fun.”
We’ve entered the Anthropocene. It’s time to read up: David Biello provides a list of required reading and a thesis on the goal of literature in this new geologic age.
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I remember several years ago when the Modern Library named “Ulysses” the greatest novel of the 20th Century, several commentators wrote indignant responses which seemed to say indirectly “If it’s so great, how come I’VE never read it.” I tend to suspect a similar motive when I see headlines like this.
Finished it? Heck, I’ve never even started it.
Yep, never even dared to start it.