What are you currently reading? (part 2)

[linguoboy]

Lavinia was a good read and I'd recommend it. It briefly got me interested in reading the Aeneid, but then I reminded myself that life is short and epic poetry tedious.

Instead I started on Indian killer by Sherman Alexie because I've never read one of his books (though I've watched a movie based on one of his short stories) and a trusted friend loves him. Alexie is Indian himself (Coeur d'Alene/Spokane) and the title is actually a play on words since the book concerns itself with a killer of apparent Indian background who is slaying white men in Seattle. I'm a third of the way through it and (with the exception of a brief burst of didacticism when one of the characters enrolls in a university course on Native American literature) I'm really enjoying it even if it is harrowing reading at times.

In the meantime, I'm still reading some Lovecraft at night and I bought a book of Murakami Haruki's short stories in translation, After the quake[*] (『神の子どもたちはみな踊る』), just to remind myself what an overrated hack he his. I've read one story so far and it's had the desired effect.

Oh, and speaking of Japanese authors, I picked up the English translation of Endo's Silence (『沈黙』). We'll see if it's as good as you think it is, Yasna.

[*] According to the translator, Murakami "insisted" the title should be written in all lower case. Well he can bite me.

[Yasna]

Lavinia was a good read and I'd recommend it. It briefly got me interested in reading the Aeneid, but then I reminded myself that life is short and epic poetry tedious.

Do you find value in reading any translated poetry? It seems to me like the original and the translated text are only tenuously connected when it comes to poetry, and thus the translated text is of dubious value.

[vijayjohn]

I find value in reading translated poetry. Translation is interesting to study in and of itself, after all. I don't see why a tenuous connection to the original can't mean a translated work has its own value. I find the connection to the original to be pretty tenuous with novels, too.

Speaking of poetry, I am now trying to learn quatrains 51-52 of Mayura Sandesham. I think I pretty much have the first 50 down. I think my dad is still impressed that I'm still trying to memorize the whole thing.

[Aurinĭa]

Speaking of poetry, I am now trying to learn quatrains 51-52 of Mayura Sandesham. I think I pretty much have the first 50 down. I think my dad is still impressed that I'm still trying to memorize the whole thing.

I'm sure you've explained it before, but why are you trying to memorise the whole thing?

[linguoboy]

I've started a bunch of things lately, but with the exception of Michael Faber's lightweight The hundred and ninety-nine steps, I haven't finished any of them. I'm making good progress in The borrower by Rebecca Makkai, another lightweight book about a small-town librarian in Missouri.

[vijayjohn]

Speaking of poetry, I am now trying to learn quatrains 51-52 of Mayura Sandesham. I think I pretty much have the first 50 down. I think my dad is still impressed that I'm still trying to memorize the whole thing.

I'm sure you've explained it before, but why are you trying to memorise the whole thing?

I don't think I ever did explain it, actually! It's basically an experiment I started doing for fun that happens to help with my (literary) Malayalam* vocabulary, but also a) I'm not entirely sure there are any copies of this book for sale anymore and b) I don't know of anyone who does know this poem these days, so maybe I can help preserve it if no one else knows it.

*And to some extent Sanskrit, since Malayalam (especially literary Malayalam) is chock-full of Sanskrit loanwords

[Yasna]

I find value in reading translated poetry. Translation is interesting to study in and of itself, after all. I don't see why a tenuous connection to the original can't mean a translated work has its own value.

For example, the vast majority of people reading Homer are above all interested in the works that kicked off Western literature. They aren't reading Homer to study the art of translation.

I find the connection to the original to be pretty tenuous with novels, too.

If that has been your experience, you should probably find some better translations.

[vijayjohn]

For example, the vast majority of people reading Homer are above all interested in the works that kicked off Western literature. They aren't reading Homer to study the art of translation.

But much of Western literature is based off of those translations anyway, not on the original.

I find the connection to the original to be pretty tenuous with novels, too.

If that has been your experience, you should probably find some better translations.

They often don't exist, though.

[linguoboy]

Got bored with the Dillard, decided to put off the Makkai for a bit. At a party last weekend, an Interesting Guy talked up Marilynne Robinson so Monday I popped into the discount used book store and picked up a pristine copy of Gilead in hardcover for less than $3. Despite the unpromising premise (dying rural Midwestern preacher writes a letter to his son), it's a good read but it's not really seizing me yet. (A friend says it picks up about a hundred pages in, which is almost halfway through the book.)

While at the bookshop, I also grabbed a grubby copy of We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. This is also nominally an epistolary novel, but that's where the resemblance ends. The narrator is addressing her husband rather than her son, who has been incarcerated for a killing spree at his high school. There's an implausible amount of dialogue (seriously, what's the longest exchange you've ever had in your life that you can remember word-for-word?) and the prose can get too writerly at times but the voice is authentic and the grim subject matter makes it hard to put down. I may even finish it before the month is up.

[Yasna]

Got bored with the Dillard, decided to put off the Makkai for a bit. At a party last weekend, an Interesting Guy talked up Marilynne Robinson so Monday I popped into the discount used book store and picked up a pristine copy of Gilead in hardcover for less than $3. Despite the unpromising premise (dying rural Midwestern preacher writes a letter to his son), it's a good read but it's not really seizing me yet. (A friend says it picks up about a hundred pages in, which is almost halfway through the book.)

Some readers with Good Taste have praised this book to high heaven, so I'll have to get around to it sooner rather than later myself.

[linguoboy]

Some readers with Good Taste have praised this book to high heaven, so I'll have to get around to it sooner rather than later myself.

I think I'm only on page 45 or something but I'm not seeing what supposedly elevates this from the realm of solidly good to transcendent greatness yet.

[vijayjohn]

Got bored with the Dillard

What Dillard?

[linguoboy]

Do you find value in reading any translated poetry? It seems to me like the original and the translated text are only tenuously connected when it comes to poetry, and thus the translated text is of dubious value.

Absolutely. I don't hold with this notion that poetry is what is lost in translation. There's a range here, just like there is with prose translations. If you're working with two languages which are closely related and have similar poetic traditions, you have the potential to be very faithful. As the distance--both linguistic and stylistic--grows, it gets trickier, but that doesn't mean there's no point in the attempt.

Not every poet is a genius. A lot of poetry is very conventional and finding equivalents in a target language which have a similar effect (even if you can't reproduce the same sound-symbolism or whatever) isn't that difficult. Not all poetic devices rely on the specific form-meaning combinations of particular words. A poem's effect might rely chiefly on general pattern of repetition, which is something which should be reproducible in any language.

Moreover, it was narrative poetry which inspired this question and here there's value in translating the content even at the cost of ignoring a lot of the form. Consider the enduring popularity of reworkings of the Odyssey (which for centuries was largely unknown in its original version). Obviously there's something there worth responding to independent of Homer's versification.

All that said, where possible, I try to read translated poetry in facing-page editions. Particularly Classical Chinese poetry, because while it's interesting to have one expert's interpretation, I know just enough about the language to see how limiting that can be.

[Yasna]

That makes sense, especially regarding narrative poetry. I guess there's also the question of what an individual reader is trying to get out of poetry. The main pull of poetry for me is the aural experience, so I am frustrated by the considerable limitations of translation in this respect.

----

I finished The Rise and Fall of Nations, which was an excellent run-through of modern global economics and what has been learned from the 2008 crisis. I'm currently reading the collection of novellas 猟銃・闘牛 (The Hunting Gun / Bullfight) by linguoboy's favorite author.

[linguoboy]

I'm currently reading the collection of novellas 猟銃・闘牛 (The Hunting Gun / Bullfight) by linguoboy's favorite author.

谷崎 潤一郎?

[Yasna]

I'm currently reading the collection of novellas 猟銃・闘牛 (The Hunting Gun / Bullfight) by linguoboy's favorite author.

谷崎 潤一郎?

That supremely boring writer of historical fiction, 井上靖.

[vijayjohn]

I've been trying to review Mayura Sandesham. So far, I've gotten up to quatrain #50. Now I just have to see how well I can remember quatrains 51-52. Then I'll have to learn some new ones...eventually. I kind of forgot some of the later parts.

[linguoboy]

I'm currently reading the collection of novellas 猟銃・闘牛 (The Hunting Gun / Bullfight) by linguoboy's favorite author.

谷崎 潤一郎?

That supremely boring writer of historical fiction, 井上靖.

I knew it had to be either him or 村上春樹 ...

I am 90% of the way through the Shriver, so clearly it's been as engrossing a read as I hoped. Unfortunately, her artifice hasn't become less conspicuous over the course of the last several hundred pages. I finally managed to stop thinking about how implausible the chapters are as letters to an ex right about the time that her teen protagonist began speaking in more than monosyllables. Shriver (who's never raised children) has a poor grasp of how teens talked twenty years ago. She gets the clipped syntax right, but the diction is filled with jarring choices like chump, and priss-pot(!), and take it on the chin. It's making certain passages painful to read for all the wrong reasons.

And then there are the coincidences which are a little too neat. Despite the epistolary structure, the story is told essentially chronologically, interspersed with "flash-forwards" from the narrator's present life. And some of these flashes conveniently echo plot points which have just been or are just about to be revealed in the main narrative. It's a trick which works well when done sparingly and with finesse, but I think she's pushing her luck with it.

What she does very well is satirising a certain kind of insufferable East Coast liberal who clings to their supposed cosmopolitanism as something which makes them superior to average Americans. But I've seen that done well elsewhere. Where I felt she broke the most new ground was in talking unsentimentally about the worst aspects of parenthood, which is especially impressive given that she hasn't experienced them personally. The whole book is an attempt to answer to the question, "What if you give birth to someone you hate?" It's not a pleasant answer.

Meanwhile, I'm dawdling in the Robinson. At best, I read a few pages a night right before I fall asleep. It's good for that because it's entirely episodic, so I never find myself tempted to read another chapter in order to find out what happens next. There aren't even any chapters, just blocks of paragraphs. The longest incidents fill maybe four or five pages, then we're on to the next solemn observation. Somehow it manages not to fall into the swamp of "inspirational literature" but I'm struggling to see the greatness others have found in it.

[Iván]

La insoportable levedad del ser (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) by Milan Kundera.

Only 20 pages left. My next books are: Anna Karenina by Tolstoi, La lengua absuelta (Die gerettete Zunge) by Elias Canetti, El año de la liebre (Jäniksen vuosi) by Arto Paasilinna and I'd like to buy any book written by Murakami. By the way, where can I get books written in their original language? Any tips?

[linguoboy]

By the way, where can I get books written in their original language? Any tips?

I take it you've tried Amazon? The American site has a good selection; I've even bought books in Irish there.

What languages in particular are you interested in?