“Arguably versioning is a practice reserved for when a literary translator isn’t available or perhaps doesn’t actually exist who can bridge both languages. At worst, it has and can be done by colonisers or writers from major languages mangling minor literatures for sport and without care from a position of imbedded prejudice, power and authority.” Jen Calleja on the difference between translating and versioning of an original text, over at The Quietus.
Version Control
On Violence
“They couldn’t testify because they were dead so I wanted to lend my own body and voice to them.” Han Kang on writing about the Gwangju massacre and her slim novels, Human Acts and The Vegetarian.
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Potent Potables: Presidential Edition
The White House recently released its beer recipe, and that’s swell and all, but for a truly patriotic potable, check out the “Small Beer” brewed for George Washington in 1789.
A helping hand
This week, Melville House is donating all profits from books purchased on their website to Japan disaster relief.
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Naked Reading
Recommended Reading: “Nudists” by David James Poissant.
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Resurrecting Shelley
Early on in her career, the poet Muriel Spark decided that Mary Shelley was criminally underrated as a writer. In bringing the Frankenstein author the fame she deserved, Spark wrote a biography, distanced Shelley from her famed poet husband and labeled her “the founder of science fiction.” (Related: our own Lydia Kiesling on Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.) (h/t Arts & Letters Daily)
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“For years and years I thought the stories were just practice”
The New Yorker interviews Alice Munro.